Every alumni relations strategy I’ve built started the same way: not with a campaign, but with a spreadsheet and a lot of metrics. Maybe you recently started your new role and are looking for some tips, tricks and guidance. Or you have been in the industry for quite some time already and on the hunt for new ideas. Then this series of posts might be just what you are looking for. I’m pouring my experience, processes, ideas and tips into guides and write-ups. All with the purpose of helping others advance their own alumni relations efforts.
Other posts in this category:
- Your first 90 days in alumni Relations
- Keeping alumni data up to date
- My job in alumni relations
- Bonus: Two books that helped me shape my alumni data management strategies
In this post however, I will be diving into alumni data strategy and how to get started with it. Because alumni data is, in my opinion, what should be driving any kind of alumni relations or engagement strategy. It’s similar to any other (commercial or otherwise) business strategy. You need metrics to base your decision on, to measure your activities and to determine your success. So, let’s get started.
Your first objective: Gathering base metrics
At the very base of any alumni strategy, it is vital you know what exactly your alumni community consist of. You don’t necessarily need to start dusting off old alma-matter books to collect names and records yourself. Ideally, you’d have a central alumni CRM to start your investigation. If that’s not the case, your institutes program management office/team is a good place to start. They often hold digital records on their graduates as well.
These are some of the base metrics I’d recommend every alumni relations officer or manager to gather first:
Total alumni you can effectively reach (contactable alumni)
Contactable alumni is the real metric that matters for everything else: your engagement rate, your event reach, your fundraising potential. Most teams quote total alumni and wonder why their engagement metrics look bad. Only to realize they can effectively communicate with far fewer of their alumni then they initially assumed.
- Total alive alumni
- Total contactable alumni
- Total alumni with an email address
- Total alumni with a postal address
Total alumni per program/degree type
Simply knowing in what bucket or category of education your alumni fall will help you shape your strategy more effectively. It helps if you can break this down into graduation year or program. Then you could categorize your alumni based on their current post-graduate experience level. You could start labelling alumni as “Class of 2026” for example.
- Total MSc Alumni of a given year/program
- Total BSc Alumni of a given year/program
Some recent metrics on e.g. mailing campaigns
Just sending emails for the sake of communicating is a one-way ticket to ruining any kind of engagement opportunities you might have had with your alumni. Instead, after every mailing you should look at the following metrics, and see what could be improved and how. Start spotting patterns. This build-measure-learn mindset is exactly what reading The Lean Startup taught me.
- Email open rate
- Email click rate
- Email bounce rate
- Alumni website visits
A basic overview of country of residence & current employment status
If you want to organize events, you NEED to know the location of your alumni and their current industry. It will allow you to organize events tailored to their specific interests. A guest lecture on supply chain disruptions is highly relevant for Supply Chain or Business/Entrepreneurship alumni for example.
- Total alumni per country
- Total alumni in capitol cities
- Focus on at least creating a top-5 of represented cities to start
- Alumni per industry
- (aggregate will do when starting out)
Once you have those base metrics, you can start forming an idea of how to approach your alumni community.
Seeing a lot from the same program in a country abroad? Maybe a regional community event would work there. Or maybe you notice you’re missing a lot of address-details, while having a lot of e-mail addresses. That’s a great argument to start doing a e-mail campaign around that topic. It all depends on your priorities. Seeing the metrics might help you shape those goals in the first place.
Your first focus however, should be to start filling in the gaps. Pick a few cohorts or programs, and see how complete the data is. Does everyone have an (up to date) e-mail address for example? Is there something in terms of address or employment data? These kinds of data-points should be base-line and should be your primary focus to collect (aggregated or not).
This will take time, and trust me when I say you can never attain 100% (or even 85%) data completeness. Once data enters your CRM, it’s already outdated before you hit save on the record. But that should not stop you from trying. So start devising some campaigns, activities or strategies to collect the data you miss.
Tips & tricks to gather alumni data
Of course that’s easier said then done. Data does not just magically appear in your inbox, alumni don’t sit around waiting for you to present them with a form either. And in this day and age, GDPR and data-privacy is everywhere, so people tend to be even more hesitant in handing over their personal details. These are some tips I have for you to still collect some vital metrics on you alumni.
- Be present at the graduation ceremomy.
This might be super-obvious, but it’s important. Being present and visible at the graduation ceremony shows the new alumni that you exist. If you have the opportunity, try to be part of the communications around the ceremony. See if you can send a post-graduation email for example containing the graduation ceremony photo’s. This will be a great moment to connect and engage with these new alumni.
- Hold a (employment) survey amongst recent graduates.
Use any kind of survey tool, like Qualtrics (often already used at universities), and try to send out a employment survey to your recent graduates. Ideally six months after they graduate. Not only does it provide you with intel on where they ended up, it also offers a opportunity to provide career advice and services to those that are still struggling to find employment. Keep the survey simple. Questions should be closed: “Are you currently employed? Yes/No”, and “what industry are you currently working in”. Leave a box for open feedback + an option to leave their email address in case they want to receive assistance
- Have a central CRM-system in place, with proper data-forms and tools for alumni to manage their own details.
Having the option to send out personalised emails and forms is a massive boon to alumni engagement. Putting the responsibility and opportunity to manage personal details in the alumni’s own hands builds trust. In itself, being able to run campaigns on alumni to update their details is an excellent opportunity for engagement.
Having a central CRM will turbo-charge the way you manage and collect alumni data. Getting records entered might at first be a hassle, see if your IT-team or admissions and program management offices are using one already that you might retrieve data from. Of course, always check your institutes privacy-statements when it comes to handling personal details. Often it’s covered. Keep in mind that CRM’s need to be maintained and administrated, something that can be a full-time job in itself and requires a certain expertise.
- Work together with your Admissions, Program Management and Student-affairs offices
You don’t have to start with nothing. More often than not, other departments and teams already work with central systems and student/alumni records.Try and get processes going in which you can (automatically) exchange graduate information. These can be automatic data-connections between the systems of the program managers to a central CRM. Or a delivery of names/email addresses which you can then send a alumni-welcome email for example.
It’s going to be a challenge if you start from nothing, I won’t lie. But I hope these tips will help you get started with an alumni data strategy concept. We all got to start somewhere. I always work with the concept that numbers will speak for themselves. The more insights you gather, the stronger a case you can make for your alumni relations strategy.
I will be writing more about practical campaigns you can run or setup to gather data efficiently in future posts.
Good luck!