An alumni engagement survey is a great tool to help you understand your alumni community. In this guide, read our top engagement survey sample questions to ask.
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Surveys are a highly effective tool to supercharge engagement in alumni networks. Yet research shows that only 22% of companies get satisfactory results from their engagement surveys.
The reason is simple—organizations think engagement surveys should measure employee engagement when the goal should, in fact, be to assess the impact of your engagement strategies and evaluate whether they have influenced your network. They can provide you with actionable data to refine engagement strategies going forward.
Let’s explore why alumni engagement matters, the importance of structuring your survey to optimize responses and what kind of surveys elicit the most valuable feedback.
Alumni can offer many benefits to a business or organization. It can build brand loyalty, support professional development, and serve as a talent pool of former (and recommended) candidates, ideal for filling job vacancies.
Yet it's hard to optimize your alumni experience when you don't know what the community members think. An effective alumni engagement survey can shed light on their thoughts, ideas and grievances. It helps build on the mutually beneficial relationship between corporate alumni and the businesses they used to work for; the alumni get to share their opinions and ideas, and the organizations can use this insight to improve the experience.
With valuable survey data, you can improve the platform to drive more value for the members and the organisation.
It's normal to encounter roadblocks when approaching your alumni to participate in surveys and questionnaires. To combat this, it's important you explain the value it adds, and why their participation matters.
Here's some further tips:
When composing questions for your survey, the rule of thumb is never to ask a question you can’t take action on. Avoid vague or yes/no questions such as ”Is the company on the right path?” as this won’t provide any intel on creating a path to action.
Instead, structure your survey questions more like the sample questions listed below. Each question is open-ended and provides a platform for further discussion – and, more importantly, action.
Are you seeking input on the value of current alumni program elements such as content, portal, events, and/or benefits programs? Ask questions with answer options or a rating scale to find out how often the respondent accesses the content.
Once you understand what your members value, you are in a better position to create content the community actually wants. Surveys also help clarify the return-on-investment plan to executives and are a useful way to get feedback to tailor programs and keep alumni engaged.
You can also ask questions around:
You can tailor your questions to gauge how your alumni community perceives the quality of engagement your platform provides. Questions that measure the effectiveness of your engagement strategies will focus on whether the content, opportunities, and events you offer your alumni are relevant to them.
Knowing whether you communicate with your alumni on their preferred communication platform is as important as the messages you send.
With so many apps and devices available, a survey is a helpful way to ask members about their communication preferences – how often they want to hear from you and through what channels.
For instance, via newsletter, portal, social media, texts, chats, or all of the above, depending on what you’re communicating.
Some other questions you can include in the survey:
You will want to know what actions alumni are taking in terms of career growth and job prospects.
Here you should ask questions that probe their likelihood of returning to your company, what incentives they value in return for referring a candidate, and how likely they are to refer a new business.
You can expand on this line of questioning with some follow-ups, including:
This is your opportunity to discover how your alumni engagement scores in terms of professional development opportunities, networking capabilities, and alumni-centered events.
End your engagement survey with some open-ended questions or provide a space for participants to provide feedback on how they view the alumni, and what else could have been included in the survey.
To get the most out of your alumni survey, you can follow some best practices.
If you want to increase alumni engagement in surveys, you need to run them regularly. Whether it’s annual, formal surveys, or quarterly questionnaires carried out informally through internal chat channels, find a tempo and stick to it.
What do you want to achieve from the survey? What insights or data do you hope to glean from your alumni? What do you need to help you improve your alumni program? Having clear objectives will help you set questions that return relevant feedback.
Your alumni may need a little nudge to participate in a survey – and that’s okay! If you can offer a small incentive, whether that’s a gift card, time back or a donation to a charity or nonprofit, it can improve participation.
It's no good putting out a survey if your alumni don't know it exists. Make sure you utilise the features of your alumni community, whether that's events, emails, message boards or private messages, to get the word out.
It’s important to make alumni members feel like their input is valued. Send thank you messages after your alumni complete the survey and share the results when you have aggregated them. This is important—it shows transparency, builds trust, and that the survey results hold significance. If the results lead to change, share these as well to show respondents that their voices can have an impact.
There’s no point in sending out surveys if you can’t monitor engagement – and get insights into what you can optimize in future surveys. A 5- or 7-point semantic differential scale is an effective way to measure your alumni’s attitudes toward concepts, ideas, people, and events. It is also a reliable method of measuring people’s emotional attitudes toward your alumni engagement practices.
The most effective way to create an engaged alumni platform that delivers value is to use dedicated alumni management software like EnterpriseAlumni. Our platform offers effective engagement tools, in-depth metrics, enhanced security and flexible access through a mobile app.
Alumni engagement surveys are an under-utilized tool that allows organizations to map member feedback to their program goals.
Alumni managers who consistently ask members for their input and constructive feedback are destined to see alumni engagement increase in all areas, from business referrals to mentoring and contributing innovative content.
For more information on why this is important, read about the impact an alumni network has on employee engagement here.
If you’re searching for a platform to host your alumni community, look no further than EnterpriseAlumni – our platform has all the features you need to build a thriving network.
