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Of all the audiences you communicate to as a higher education marketer, alumni are among the most rewarding and satisfying segment. If you market well to your alumni, they’ll return the favor and take care of the alma mater.
Alumni already understand the value your institution has to offer. They’re recipients of the value of your education.
Considering how familiar your alumni are to your institution’s mission and value, you would think marketing to them would be a piece of cake.
When this happens, alumni begin to receive solicitations in every message from their alma mater.
The idea is that the more we ask, the more likely they’ll give. We fear we’re leaving money on the table if there’s no form of a solicitation in each message.
In fact, it produces the opposite effect. Solicitations in every marketing message will create the undesirable impression that you’re either desperate for help, careless with your resources, or greedy.
Younger alumni especially want freedom to choose how they’re going to support their school—and that may not mean a monetary donation.
Zeroing in on the need for financial support in every communication will only alienate them from you.
If you focus your alumni marketing on these four principles, you’ll not only improve your marketing results, you’ll improve your fundraising results.
In order to hit their goals, the development department needs constituencies that are ready to give. Marketing is here to make that happen.
If you can make a friend through your marketing, development should have no problem making a donor out of them.
And what did our moms tell us about making friends? First, you have to be a friend.
Content marketing expert Jay Baer explains in his New York Times bestseller, Youtility, that marketers should strive to make their content useful to their audiences as opposed to “amazing.”
This goes well beyond telling them about the latest and greatest updates from campus. Craft your marketing messages around the felt needs, aspirations, and challenges your alumni face every day.
Inspire. Provide career advice. Become the curator of content they value about life.
And you’ll make a lot of friends.
Sure, they’re all alumni, but that doesn’t mean they’re all the same. Creating content for the various affinity groups from your school will ensure that they feel heard and understood.
Like Jan Brady, these alumni groups don’t want to be overshadowed by other alumni groups! Each one wants to feel they’re recognized for their own merits.
Budgets for many students are tight, especially among young alumni and grad students. Saddled with student loans and facing loan payments that just kicked in six months after graduation, these alumni are not prime candidates for solicitations.
Imagine what it feels like to get your email newsletter—yet again asking for money—right next to their student loan payment notification email.
Yeah… Ouch!
So be sensitive to this marketing segment, especially when it comes to issues about money.
Find ways in your marketing to get alumni involved in your mission that don’t involve financial giving. And when you do need to make the ask, let them know that your goal is to increase giving percentages, another form of participation, and suggest a $5 donation to do so.
Surveys, sharing their story with you, sharing your social media posts with their followers, coming to a homecoming game, volunteering at a campus days event—all of these are ways alumni can give back to their school without ever opening their wallet.
The more alumni participate with you in other ways, the more likely they’ll be to give when the development department launches their next fundraising campaign.
The objective of alumni marketing should be to promote the mission of the organization among alumni.
If you build your marketing strategy on these four pillars, you can promote the mission of the school as well as prepare the way for lucrative fundraising campaigns.
If you need help with any area of your school’s marketing, contact us and learn what our team can do for you. There’s no obligation.
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