Alumni Relations: Best Practices for Cultivating Lifelong Connections
It’s no secret that most colleges and universities value their alumni. A successful alumni engagement program can support a higher educational institution across a variety of needs, whether it’s to support fundraising goals, drive athletic revenue, or increase new student enrollment. Yet, 87% of alumni professionals report they need to improve member engagement. Staying on top of trends and best practices in alumni relations ensures that your team can keep alumni inspired, engaged, and active in your institution’s community.
Understanding Your Alumni
The Importance of Personas
Successful alumni engagement professionals know that you can’t just have a single audience - alumni. Personas allow your team to identify (and get more granular) around the specific motivators, communication preferences, and demographics of your alumni audience. Not every audience responds the same way to a specific marketing message. Your content should align with your personas.
Content that Resonates
As an example, let’s say that you have an alumni persona of sports-enthusiasts. They want to stay close to the school’s athletic program. Successful alumni engagement programs know the value in mixing up their content. Don’t just create and send donation requests or fundraising content. Instead, look for opportunities to create content your personas will find valuable. Share highlights from the year, notable events, or even new program announcements. On top of mixing up the topic of your content, you also should mix up your content media. Different personas have different content wants.
Leveraging Surveys
Surveys are a powerful tool for engaging with your alumni and should be a part of every school’s alumni engagement efforts. Whether it’s a yearly survey or a quarterly touch base, surveys provide your alumni with an opportunity to give feedback on your alumni engagement efforts. Consider utilizing a third-party platform to help manage and share your surveys.
User-Generated Content
Enter user-generated content (UGC). Not only is UGC virtually free to produce (as your audience is creating the content on your behalf), it is also one of the more engaging types of content.
Read also: Legacy of Friends University
Communication Strategies
Staying in Touch
Staying in touch with your alumni is one of the best ways to improve alumni engagement. Regular communication shows that you are active in managing and engaging with your community. It also helps to train your alumni to expect your touch as you become a familiar face in their inboxes and their social media channels.
Partner Programs
If your alumni association doesn’t already have one, consider building a partner program. Working with local restaurants to offer a percentage off meals to university alumni. Asking local gyms to give alumni a free month of membership. Partnering with hotels/travel lounges to offer exclusive perks to members. By offering these benefits, you’ll not only keep your alumni engaged but you’ll also help them save money on things they’re already using.
Involve Alumni in Planning
Help foster a sense of connection to your institute of higher education by your alumni in the planning process for upcoming events, programs, investments, or campus construction. Use your alumni engagement platform (combined with the above-mentioned survey functionality) to solicit opinions and thoughts at the start of your program. Once the program has kicked off, you can continue to keep them engaged with updates on the progress of the project. You can also crowdsource specific decisions that need to be made (such as the style of door knob that may go into a new building, or what food to serve at an upcoming function). Whatever you do, don’t take alumni engagement for granted. Remember, your alumni are actively choosing to stay connected to their alma mater.
Digital Engagement
Personalization is Key
It’s no surprise that personalization is key in alumni engagement. People across all generations have come to expect personalized engagement and messaging from retailers and service providers.
Digital-First Approach
This means keeping your youngest alumni active and inspired requires a digital-first approach to engagement. As an alumni relations professional, you have both a golden opportunity and a challenge.
Read also: Legacy of Fordham University
Utilizing Video
In a digital age, it’s crucial to use different mediums like video to catch your alumni’s attention. Get creative when thinking about alumni engagement ideas that use video. You can do things like send video invitations to reunions or other events, personalize video messages for birthdays or other milestones, and encourage alumni to create and share their own videos.
Text Messaging
77% of students prefer receiving relevant information from colleges through text messages. Texting is an excellent tool to improve the quality of engagement with alumni. Consider text messaging tools that enable a single staffer to handle around 200 conversations at the same time. When they sign up, send a confirmation text asking for details such as name, year of graduation (predicted), what kind of messages they would like to receive, and preferred mode of communication. A P2P texting tool is an excellent way to reach out.
Global Alumni Network
When you plan for your alumni universe, plan internationally. “One of the things that we’re very cognizant of is how can we make everything we do… transparent but also available to alumni around the globe. You could utilize this global network to guide students on life after university. When your ex-students see value in engaging with the institution after they graduate, they will respond and keep in touch- even when they are spread across the globe.
Social Media
Engage in communication tools that provide a direct line between alumni and the university. The Ohio State University has an Instagram page dedicated to its alumni.
Alumni Portal
An alumni portal provides a platform for alumni to connect with each other, as well as with your school. Alumni portals provide opportunities for alumni to engage with your school beyond their time as students. An alumni portal can also serve as a way to recognize the achievements and successes of alumni.
Read also: Baylor's Notable Alumni
Career and Networking Opportunities
Career-Focused Programs
Career-focused programs can be a win-win-win for students, departments and alumni. Alumni often respond to opportunities to help students through courses or mentoring. Now that Zoom calls are the norm, it’s easier than ever to ask grads to give an hour as experts for career panel discussions and Q&As.
Mentorship
MCHI+D alumni offer students critiques and feedback through a capstone program and career fairs.
Career Services
MHCI+D offers ongoing career services to alumni. Most universities offer career services to their students to help them find their way in the world after graduation.
Networking Events
Communication Leadership hosts “First Friday” networking events, which bring students to visit a local company or organization and meet with alumni. Alumni can provide valuable networking opportunities for current students and recent graduates. By connecting with alumni, students can learn about various career paths, gain industry insights, and make useful contacts.
Job-Seeking Support
In times of economic unease and uncertainty, career advice and job-seeking support may be the top resources that people seek from their fellow alumni. Deliver personalized, targeted opportunities that match each alumni’s interests and career stage. Generic job boards or opportunity lists can easily be overlooked.
Building Relationships
Starting Early
It's never too early to start thinking about alumni engagement. In fact, the key to creating engaged alumni is to begin building relationships with students well before they graduate. If students feel valued and supported, they’re more likely to recommend your school to others. Build lifelong relationships by making current students feel valued, and make it clear the journey doesn’t end as soon as they graduate.
Transition Support
Another effective way to build strong alumni relationships is by providing resources and support during the transition from student to alum. Before they leave campus, make sure soon-to-be-graduates know about these resources so that they can access them. Graduation can be a challenging time for many students. It's important to capture their attention and set expectations for what their relationship with your school will look like going forward. Clearly outline what graduates can expect in terms of communications, events, and opportunities, so your school can ensure they remain engaged long after they graduate.
Consistent Communication
Consistent communication is critical to keeping graduates engaged. Your school should regularly communicate with alumni about upcoming events, news, and opportunities.
Alumni Associations
Creating or revamping your alumni association can be a powerful way to keep graduates engaged over the long term. Alumni associations can provide a variety of benefits, such as networking opportunities, career resources, and social events.
Celebrating Alumni Achievements
Celebrating your alumni's achievements and successes is a powerful way to keep them engaged and connected. Your school can highlight alumni accomplishments through social media, newsletters, and other communication channels.
Assessing Needs and Interests
Continually assessing alumni needs and interests can help your school stay relevant and responsive to their changing needs.
Fundraising and Philanthropy
The Role of Alumni
The alumni community plays a crucial role in fundraising and philanthropy. They can make financial contributions, volunteer their time, and advocate for your school to others. Investing even a little bit in providing the best possible alumni engagement experience will pay off in dividends.
Thank You Notes
74% of donors appreciate personal “thank you” for their contributions.
Outreach Focus
Outreach shouldn’t solely focus on donations. While financial contributions are ultimately the outcome universities are seeking, this can’t be the only communication alumni receive.
Diversity and Inclusion
Alumni Networks and Affinity Groups
One way to foster a welcoming and equitable alumni engagement program is to establish alumni networks or affinity groups that cater to specific demographics or shared interests. These groups can provide a community for alumni of different backgrounds, races, religions, sexual orientations, and genders to connect with, network with, and support each other.
Design Events to Accommodate a Diverse Audience
Design events to accommodate a diverse audience (e.g., donors Vs. networking people, locals Vs. international students, affluent Vs.
Measuring Engagement
Engagement Scores
Ask your CRO about alumni engagement scores.
Tracking Metrics
Approaches based on data-driven insights. like event participation, donations, volunteerism and digital engagement. essential for tracking these metrics.
Utilizing SIS Data
SIS Data and provide comprehensive insights into alumni interactions. programs interest alumni most. are interacting with the institution's content.
Community Analytics
Measuring engagement in an online alumni community requires balancing both qualitative and quantitative insights. Ask yourself: What types of engagement matter most? Is it active participation in live feed discussions, attendance at webinars or events, or offline relationships formed through community connections?
Overcoming Challenges
Addressing Evolving Needs
When devising an alumni engagement strategy, you need to focus on these evolving needs and expectations. The needs of your recent graduates will be different from those who passed out years ago. Moreover, you cannot take their involvement with your university for granted. Students may be dissatisfied with their courses, networking opportunities, or career prospects they got from you. The third important aspect to remember is always to prompt action.
Segmentation
The alumni body is hugely diverse - and institutions should segment these groups so messages are targeted to the right people. Is a recent graduate interested in the same news as someone who left 50 years earlier? And who is more likely to donate? All content should feel relevant and personalized, which creates challenges if alumni are all treated the same. Audience segmentation is key. Just as importantly, segmentation deepens your understanding of your audience. It reveals alumni needs, challenges, and the avenues in which they are motivated to contribute. Strategic segmentation can help.
Maintaining Ongoing Engagement
Maintaining an engaged alumni community can be challenging. As time passes from a member’s original connection to your organization-whether as a student or employee-it’s natural for interest to fade. The key is meeting alumni where they are.
Communication Overload
Avoid overwhelming alumni and make each message more engaging.
The Importance of Alumni Engagement
Strategic Growth and Advancement
Building meaningful relationships with students and alumni is important for the strategic growth and advancement of higher education programs.
Benefits for Students and Institutions
Current students at institutions benefit from the mentorship opportunities and improved job placement rates that engaged alumni bring. And institutions are able to partner with alumni to meet financial goals for scholarships and other campus developments.
Alumni as Ambassadors
Your institution’s alumni are one of the strongest assets when it comes to being ambassadors and garnering support for the school. Alumni can also act as brand ambassadors, promoting your school’s brand to others and helping to attract (and retain) new students, faculty, and staff. Graduates are the backbone of a college or university. They are campus ambassadors proudly wearing the name of their institution on hats and shirts, they are supporters cheering at sporting events, they are recruiters helping to place new graduates into jobs, and they are lifelong students staying active within their fields. Since a thriving alumni community continues the legacy of an institution, 62 percent of institutional representatives report that their top priority is to increase the number of engaged alumni.
Long-Term Loyalty
Alumni are, in many ways, your most valuable audience. They’ve already bought into your organization-whether as students, employees, or volunteers-and are naturally primed to stay connected. When nurtured thoughtfully, alumni loyalty strengthens your brand’s reputation, sustains long-term financial support, and reinforces a healthy lifecycle from student or employee to alumni to advocate or donor.
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