In working with chapters across the country, ChapterSpot has seen a lot of active chapters successfully re-energize their alumni base. By following these 3 steps, we guarantee that your alumni base will be the strongest it’s been in years.
Step 1: Register your alumni
Chapterspot has a way to automate this process which makes it really easy. I highly suggest you check out their free service.
Regardless of what system you use, you need to be sure you have a good contact list in order to start engaging with your alumni.
Step 2: Get your website ready for alumni visitors
Create an Alumni page if you don’t have one (explain that you are making a new initiative to communicate with all alumni)
Put an Events widget showing upcoming Alumni events
Put an Alumni registration form on your Alumni page/Homepage
Step 3: Post Alumni Updates!! (this is the fun/important part)
The trick is posting often and posting consistently.
1. Pick an alumni you know well, call them, and ask them to answer a simple survey. Here are good sample questions:
What’s your occupation?
Where do you live?
Describe your average Friday night:
Any other alumni/actives living close to you?
Are you Married/Girlfriend/Boyfriend/Single?
What’s your favorite fraternity memory?
What Alumni should I interview next?
What do you think of our new website?
Have you posted a link to our new website on your Facebook?
2. Post the survey as a News post on your Website (make sure you have a News widget on your homepage and on the Alumni Page)
3. Send a Message to all your Alumni. Here is a sample of what it should look like:
Alumni –
We just posted our interview with Brother John Doe. To see what John says he does on his Friday nights, click here to visit our Alumni page on our new website: [YOUR ALUMNI PAGE LINK HERE].
We’ll also tell you who John asked us to interview next week! New interviews are posted every Friday!”
4. Post the same message on Facebook/Twitter in case some Alumni aren’t in your email system (*that’s why you need the alumni registration form)
5. Reach out to the next Alumni and continue the trend!
Tips:
Keep to your routine! Make sure to have a post every Friday no matter what. Once you miss posts, you lose reliability.
Collect surveys whenever you can! Did you run into an alumni at a BBQ? Survey them, save the responses in your phone and when mid-terms come up, you’ll have an interviews saved up.
Things moving along quickly? Great – start thinking about featuring Alumni businesses!
Check your database before calling to make sure you have their latest contact details
Questions:
Brothers: What survey questions do you think would be good to ask?
Alumni: How should Actives grab your interest?
This answer was written by Brendan F. of Chapterspot.com and contributor for the thefraternityadvisor.com. If you are interested in writing for thefraternityadvisor.com – let us know (CLICK HERE)!