How do you currently engage your alumni network? Instead of monthly printed newsletters mailed out with the potential of being sent to an old address or immediately thrown away, or emails that sit in someone’s inbox or redirected to their spam folder, universities are turning to a more proactive approach. An alumni relations mobile app organizes and maintains your alumni communications strategy by providing your former students with targeted communications, at the exact right time. The alumni app gives alumni users the ability to network at their own leisure and is a communication method that resonates with this modern time go-to form of engagement and interaction.
There’s several ways to leverage your alumni mobile app and empower your former students to bolster communication among the alumni. Here are 6 ideas to help build successful alumni ties and communication with an alumni relations mobile app.
1. Customize your alumni communications strategy for each user
Every year you have graduating students from various departments, who participated in a myriad of organizations and activities while in college, and have several different interests and reasons they’re on the alumni relations app. With the app, build an experience for each user, organized by their graduating class and create forums and channels dedicated to similar interests. By designing a community that gives each former student a designated space composed of multiple features and forums, they can pick and choose their components to make for a dynamic experience, personalized to each user’s essentials to advance their experience.
2. Provide ample and rich content to bolster engagement
Communication and connection between alumni can be challenging, especially for alum who may be more timid, or are new the alumni app. Create a unique alumni communications strategy and post multiple content forms to engage all users. Whether it’s a poll, something easy to participate in and vote on to get them started and connected. You can also make suggestions of forums, pages, and channels they should join. Also, have a section where users can see who else is on the app, that way they can find and reconnect with old friends and start building their specific community. By providing multiple content opportunities, you give users a way to cultivate their own community experience that fits them.
3. Host a dedicated section to locate and save upcoming events
Alumni are dispersed around the globe post-graduation. Some are local-based, others have moved back to their hometown, or even traveled to a new state for work or to start their next chapter, potentially even moved out of the country. With an alumni communications strategy and alumni-relations app, you can connect your entire alumni network in one, consolidated space. Even if they’re across the coast or in another country, provide a calendar of upcoming events, virtual meetups, and the ability to create their own virtual activities to stay in touch or make connections with other former students. Who knows, by giving former students the ability to host their own events, they might be able to find other alum in the new area they’re currently living in.
4. Create an effective alumni communications strategy and prepare for all upcoming reunions, uniquely.
Reunions are the long-awaited get-together for dedicated alumni who truly cherish their college years. But, the prep work can be a nightmare. From forming a reunion committee, to sending out invites, and planning logistics is just a part of the challenge. An alumni relations app can also be utilized as a reunion mobile app, since users are organized by graduating class, you can easily formulate a channel or a page dedicated to just that particular reunion. Easily inquire users to join the reunion committee, create online checklists to oversee your upcoming deadlines, and create a forum channel to pose questions to other students. From invitations to event logistics, each step of the way is made simpler because you’re already settled in your alumni mobile app community.
5. Design useful networking opportunities
Post-college your connections with fellow school alumni can be truly beneficial in your search for the start of your career trajectory. Getting an upper hand in the job market is a rarity to come by; this is where your connections really shine. The alumni app can help your former students not only connect with each other on a friendly level, but on a professional scale. Include a space on the app where students can post job opportunities, reach out to one another to make introductions, and connect in a professional capacity. Already students on the alumni app share one major connection, their former university. Make networking connections, swap job opportunities and provide insight and introductions all from one app.
6. Offer group chat and messaging to build dialogue and connection
In addition to all the features above, you can never go wrong with hosting group chat and messaging to help your alumni communications strategy flourish. Drop in prompts that encourage users to go down memory lane. Whether it’s a weekly photo contest to share a memorable photo from their college years, or a poll that asks what was their top song from their graduating year. Get the conversations flowing with these icebreakers. From there, former students will take the lead and utilize these group chats to hold their own conversations or even create their own forums over topics that they want to lead.