After your former students graduate or leave your school, it can be challenging to keep them engaged and responsive to your outreach. So, how do colleges develop and maintain strong alumni relationships to build their networks of collaborators, donors, and advocates?
To help alumni feel more connected to their alma mater, it’s important to engage them on the channels they prefer — with information and resources that are relevant to where they’re at in their lives right now.
Meet alumni where they are with text messaging
Considering that 98% of mobile phone owners read every single text they receive, it’s not surprising that text messaging is the most effective way to engage alumni of all ages and demographics. This is even true for younger alums who tend to ignore phone calls and emails, but respond to their texts within minutes. Yet many colleges and universities are still using less effective channels to interact with them.
Having direct conversations with former students through texting enables you to keep them up-to-date about events, alumni benefits, mentorship opportunities, important news, and more. When you engage your alumni on their terms, it becomes much easier to learn about their interests — so you can provide them with the relevant, timely information they actually want. This automated feedback loop builds affinity, deepens your connection with former students over time, and increases alumni engagement and giving. This approach is especially important for community colleges looking to strengthen ties with transfer students who have moved on to a four-year university.
At Mainstay, we specialize in helping colleges have meaningful conversations that improve student and alumni engagement. That’s why we created an actionable guide that highlights some of the best text messages you can send former students right now. Use these conversation starters today to spark meaningful interactions, increase engagement, and grow alumni advocacy at scale.
Strengthen alumni connections today with these 4 text scripts
In Mainstay’s quick guide, “4 texts to send your alumni and former students,” you’ll discover text messaging scripts you can use right now to start engaging alumni on their terms:
- Deliver personalized alumni resources: Every touchpoint is an opportunity to provide your alumni with personalized resources and information about the things that matter to them — whether that’s tickets to football games or career services to help them gain an edge in the workplace.
- Find out what matters to your alumni community: Interactive surveys are a simple and highly effective way to find out what services, events, topics, and opportunities your former students are most interested in — and how you can best support them moving forward.
- Drum up alumni event attendance: Stop relying on ineffective communication channels to promote your next big event, reunion, lecture, or networking opportunity. Instead, generate buzz by texting timely nudges and reminders to former students about the upcoming events that they’ll want to attend.
- Boost fundraising: Incorporating engagement opportunities into your communications is key for keeping alumni connected long-term. But, building meaningful relationships with alumni is a powerful fundraising strategy, as well. That’s because alumni with a stronger sense of belonging are more likely to give to their alma mater.
Here’s a sample conversation-starter from the guide that you can use move the needle on your alumni giving goals, today:
Hi Taylor! It’s Oli from Mainstay University! Thank you for attending our recent alumni lecture series! We got a lot of amazing feedback from former students who said the event was incredibly impactful.
Would you be interested in supporting more events like this in the future? No donation is too small.
Download “4 texts to send your alumni and former students” to access the follow-up messages in this script, as well as 3 additional conversations you can use to spark alumni engagement right now.
Start engaging alumni at scale
If you aren’t using text messaging to reconnect with your former students, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to improve alumni engagement at scale.
Download “4 texts to send your alumni and former students” today to start soliciting instant feedback and boosting giving automatically through meaningful, empathetic text conversations.
