Alumni Engagement: How to Create Newsletters Alumni Will Open

It's no secret that alumni engagement is crucial to higher ed. Former students who feel connected with their alma mater attend more events, engage more with current students and donate more often. Alumni newsletters are a great way to add communication touch points throughout the year. With graduated students being scattered across demographics, email is one of the most effective ways to stay in touch with alum. Alumni newsletters open rates sit at about 25.8% compared to the 21.3% average across all industries. And with an average ROI of $42 for every $1 spent, email remains one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies for higher education institutions.

8 Best Practices for Crafting Alumni Newsletters

Developing a clear content strategy is key to keeping alumni engaged. There aren't any one-size-fits-all approaches to designing high-converting alumni newsletters for your university. But, there are key best practices that will help.

Establish your workflow

The first step in any strong content workflow is user research. Take time to build a relationship with your alumni before creating an alumni newsletter. Reach out to alumni through LinkedIn, other social media platforms or by attending alumni events. Use these interactions to guide the content, style and cadence of your newsletter. The second step is to establish a purpose for your newsletter. Ask yourself these questions before sending your email:

• What is the purpose of the message you're sending?
• Why is this message important for alumni to know?
• How are you going to measure the success of this message?

Your third step is to create a visually-engaging newsletter. Finally, test your content and reach out to alumni for feedback. Review open rates, click-through rates and conversions from each message.

Pinpoint your KPIs

Set your KPIs by looking at the objective behind your alumni newsletter. Rather than trying to maximize all metrics, measure outcomes by associating a specific KPI with the unique objective of each email. For example, if you are looking to raise awareness through your newsletter, open rates would be a solid indicator of that success. Meanwhile, if you're aiming to simply attract more alum to an event, click-through rates are a better measurement.

Find your cadence

How many emails should you send to alumni each month? Reports indicate that the typical relationship-based organizations send an average of 16 emails per month. But when it comes to the higher education industry, universities are only sending about 7.4 emails each month. The number of emails sent each month depends on your budget and your team's bandwidth.

Personalize your outreach

Segmenting your audience is the best way to personalize your alumni newsletter. Segment by breaking down your alumni group into various subsections to cater to each section's specific needs. You can segment your email list based on geographic location, age, occupation, major and other fitting criteria to increase engagement. Useful data to gather includes:

• Where do your alumni live - what country, city and state?
• What year did they graduate?
• Which sports do they keep up with? What was their major?

Alumni will read newsletters that touch on their interests. Personalization builds that connection through care, concern and understanding of their interests.

Refresh your email list

If you find that you haven't heard back from many alumni regarding your newsletter, it's possible that they aren't receiving your email. The contact info you received from alumni years ago is likely to have changed. Keep in mind that if you continue to send your alumni newsletter to those that are uninterested, you run the risk of hitting their spam boxes.

Optimize email design

Mobile optimization is a crucial part of your strategy to increase engagement with your alumni newsletter template. Alumni have different personal and professional lives which makes it difficult to determine the best way to reach everyone.

Display clear CTAs

Along with helpful links and resources, be sure to include one clear CTA. Reports show that emails with a single call-to-action increased clicks by 371%. When it comes to CTAs, these are best practices to increase click-through rates include:

• Use a CTA color that fits your brand while also allowing it to stand out amongst the rest of the newsletter content.
• Avoid too many distractions and use imagery to guide alumni towards the CTA. Alumni will be drawn to different sections of the newsletter based on their preferences, so one clear CTA is best.

Provide value

Test and evaluate your newsletter content to determine what's intriguing to alumni. What content are they gravitating towards? Gather the feedback you receive and reframe areas of the newsletter that aren't receiving any engagement or providing value.

Content Ideas for your Alumni Newsletter

Fresh content and a perfect strategy are the key to a successful alumni newsletter. Your end goal should be to make your alumni feel valued and appreciated. Engage with your alumni through some of these thoughtful content ideas:

Newsletter introduction

The introduction of your alumni newsletter is the most important part of your newsletter. This is where you reel in your alumni with intriguing content. Some ideas for a great alumni newsletter intro include:

• School's mission - Genuinely talk about your school's ambitions, purpose and values.
• Stories alumni might find interesting - This should play off your mission statement.
• Timely topic - Introduce alumni to relevant or useful information that encourages them to engage.
• Message from administration - Alumni appreciate when higher ed officials take time to engage with them and their students.

Alumni stories

Showcase your alumnus' successes. Your newsletter should feature alumni success stories to capture where alumni are now and what they've accomplished after attending your school. Conduct interviews to provide in-depth personal stories and implement some of these ideas:

• Alumni of the month - Feature a couple alumni each month with exciting facts or stories about where they are now.
• Awards - Share alumni wins. Capture pictures and express praise for alumni that have received accolades.
• In the news - Be on the lookout for alumni that are featured in the local or national news.
• Networking - Sharing where alumni are now and what they have accomplished can help open doors for each other.

Catch up with classmates

Although professional networking is important, many alum (especially young graduates) feel connected to their school on a personal level. Help them keep in touch with their classmates by including more personal stories in the alumni newsletter.

Alumni advice column

Current students and alumni love to take advantage of networking opportunities and chances to connect. This is where alumni advice in your newsletter comes in, through an advice column, finding-your-path tips, or interviewing alumni who have traveled down different career roads.

Faculty features

Express appreciation for those that work for your school. Alumni get excited to hear about the individuals that made their university experience so great. Implement ideas like an inspiring faculty story, recognition of faculty wins, or a 10-questions faculty edition into your newsletter.

Alumni engagement

Portraying that alumni are engaging with their school is a great way to reel more of them in. Create exciting events, offer fundraising opportunities and share the excitement through pictures. Try ideas like a social snapshot, sharing pictures from past events, or recognizing donors and fundraising giving.

Closing thoughts

Close out your newsletters on a personal note. Include a story, quote or thank you note from someone alumni are familiar with. Be sure to include a picture, the real name of the sender, a written signature, and an unsubscribe option in your closer.

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