6 Ideas for How to Engage Alumni With Text Marketing
Discover our top six alumni engagement strategies to help you connect with your recent grads.
If you oversee a school, college, or university, you know how important it is to stay connected with your alums. After all, your graduates are role models for current students, as they can mentor, network, and even hire your graduating students. Also, alums often donate their time and money to their alma mater, helping to support and grow the campus.
Because these previous students play such an integral role at your school, it’s crucial that you figure out how to engage alumni. To help, we’ve highlighted six of our favorite SMS tips for alumni engagement strategies.
How to Engage Alumni with Text Marketing
If you want to connect with your graduates, then it’s time to explore our SMS engagement strategies for alumni. We’ve listed a few helpful alumni engagement best practices, followed by our top alumni outreach strategies.
#1
Invite Them to Events
Alumni love coming back to campus and reliving their glory days. Not only will they spend money at the dining hall and stock up on swag at the bookstore, but they may also be inclined to donate to their alma mater while at it. To keep your alumni interested and engaged with community life, invite them to campus events or create events specifically for them.
Of course, Homecoming celebrations are geared toward alumni, but why not make an entire weekend affair of it? In addition to inviting grads to the Homecoming football game, consider hosting a networking event the night before, a special alumni tent at the tailgate, and a mixer after the game. This will help them feel involved and connected with the college community.
To help spread the word about the event, send an SMS message such as, “(MSU) Pam, you’re invited to Homecoming this Oct. 1! We have all kinds of events scheduled for alumni like you. Click the link to see a list of the events.”
#2
Provide Them with Resources
Your school doesn’t just cater to prospective and current students—it also puts much energy toward supporting its alumni. For instance, you might offer job assistance, career counseling, and even opportunities for alumni to mentor or hire current students. However, your alumni might not know all the available resources, so it’s important to let them know.
One easy way is to create a special webpage on your college website so they can explore all the alumni resources. To help inform them, you could send them an SMS text with a link or even provide a QR code that leads them directly to the page.
An informational SMS message could read, “(MIT) Jim, as a recent MIT grad, we have your back! Check out our Alumni webpage to discover all the resources available.”
#3
Connect Them with Recent or Rising Graduates
Alumni and recent (or rising) graduates have the opportunity to help one another out. Alumni are often looking for grads to fulfill entry or intern positions, while graduates are interested in finding work post-graduation. Therefore, you could use text marketing to connect these groups.
One way to do this is to host a career fair for a specific school or major on your campus. For instance, you might host an event catered toward matching alumni with soon-to-be grads in your media art school. It could be an open call for those currently in or looking for jobs in web design, film production, photography, journalism, and more.
With that in mind, you could send two invitations via SMS messages. One would ask the alumni, “(CTU) Nic, are you looking for media art grads to join your team? You’re invited to our career fair on April 2 at 2 p.m. on the Quad to meet our rising stars!” And the other could go to current students, “(CTU) Marg, bring your resume to our career fair on April 2 at 2 p.m. on the Quad to connect with media grads and discover job opportunities!”
#4
Request Funding
Sometimes it feels like our alma mater only contacts us when they asking for money. While it is true that many schools rely on alumni contributions, there are certain ways to go about fundraising that may enhance alumni engagement and increase donations.
Instead of cold calling your alumni asking for a donation, consider sending a personalized SMS message with information regarding a special need for funding.
Let’s say your campus is looking to upgrade its sports equipment. In this case, you might send a tailored SMS message to former college athletes, encouraging them to donate. A message might say, “(JMU) Jess, as a former JMU track star, you understand the need for state-of-the-art equipment. Will you donate to our sports fundraiser to help our athletes?”
#5
Ask Alumni to Get Involved
Aside from donating money, there are many ways alumni can give back and support your educational community. For example, alumni are often willing to serve on committees and boards or volunteer at campus events. With this in mind, you could send SMS messages with these upcoming opportunities as part of your alumni outreach strategy.
Your SMS message could say, “(SDU) Jo, we’re looking for journalism grads to oversee our Writing Committee. Are you interested in volunteering for the position? Reply Y for more info.”
#6
Request Feedback
Still not sure how to connect with your alumni? Then simply ask for their input! Create a survey with questions focused on how your school can enhance its communication and improve its alumni engagement. For example, you could ask them what kind of information they’d like to receive from your school or how they’d prefer to be contacted.
To do so, do an online survey and then send a mass SMS text asking them to provide you with feedback. Your message could say, “(LSU) Jeff, we want to hear from alumni like you! Please provide us with your feedback about our alumni communications. https://eztxt.net/Tnd47M”
Learn More About EZ Texting
You may have more questions about texting alumni after reading this article. If so, be sure to check out more information on college text alerts, SMS marketing for higher education, or our SMS marketing guide.
A text marketing platform like EZ Texting connects you with your alumni and prospective students, current students, their parents, faculty, and staff. Contact us today to learn more about how EZ Texting can help your communication and marketing strategies.
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