Here are seven alumni engagement metrics that innovative companies have been known to track inside of their corporate alumni platforms.
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Are you tracking alumni engagement metrics at your company? If not, you may miss out on invaluable insights that shape the way you engage with prior employees. By now, most businesses realize that it’s vital to stay in touch with their alumni. However, the way you choose to do so has a significant impact on the success of your strategy.
A properly engaged corporate alumni contingent holds countless benefits for a business. It works to supercharge talent and employment branding. Alumni can also help to build resilience in the face of the pandemic. The network can even increase the loyalty of your current team.
When you take time to measure the engagement levels of your alumni community, it can:
Here are seven alumni engagement metrics that innovative companies have been known to track inside of their platform.
By keeping tabs on this information, your team can learn a lot about your current communication strategy – what works and what doesn’t?
The first and possibly most obvious metric you need to track is alumni network registrations. After all, this is where people opt-in to receive communication from your business.
As such, it’s a great idea to keep your platform exclusive to registered members. This way, you can start to assess engagement success right from the get-go. The exclusivity element will also naturally elevate your alumni offering.
As an insider tip, make the invitation to sign up for your alumni community a standard item on the exit interview checklist.
Also, it is always best to give prospective alumni community members a choice around how involved they want to be and how often they want to hear from you.
Be sure to include a selection of communication platforms (e.g., email, social media, SMS, etc.). Prospective community members can then indicate how they wish to be contacted.
Sending regular email newsletters is all good and well, but do you know how many recipients actually open these messages? More importantly, do people take the time to read the content and react to a CTA?
You need to measure these actions if you want your emailing efforts to be worth your while. It can also help you tailor more engagement-friendly content.
For instance, if you find that very few people are opening their emails, start by looking at your subject line. Does it grab readers’ attention? Do you show your audience from the very first glance how they can benefit from reading the email?
Then look at the content of the email itself. Is it all text? Or are you breaking it up with stimulating visual imagery? Keep trying different things, and measure the results to see what works best for engagement rates.
How many people regularly return to your alumni platform/s?
If the number is lower than you’d like, it could be an indicator of any number of things. You may need to work on your UX, or the content might not be quite right, for example.
See where you’re at, and if you are not happy with the status quo, start experimenting and A/B testing.
When your community is authentically engaged or excited about your alumni network, they will be naturally inclined to spread the news about it.
Track how often people users mention your alumni group online. This includes shares of your branded content, as well as standalone mentions in their respective feeds.
Consider it bonus points if they mention your platforms on other business-related networks!
In this case, online reputation management is also vital. Ideally, you need a dedicated person to keep track of social mentions in real-time. This way, your company can respond in timely manner if something negative should arise online. In cases like these, quick (though considered) responses are vital.
Do your alumni engage in your platform using the various systems you have put in place? If not, there might be an issue with usability. If they are exiting your platform to get things done rather than staying put, something is definitely amiss.
Does it load too slowly? Is the functionality too clunky? Once you know that there is an issue, you can survey your alumni to find and resolve the issue.
In this case, ‘retention rate’ actually refers to two separate metrics.
Firstly, it relates to the number of alumni you retain as a part of your community for the long haul. There will be some unsubscribes along the way, and keeping track of when these happen might help you understand why.
For instance, if you notice a spike of unsubscribes after a series of newsletters did the rounds, it might be that your frequency of interaction was too high.
Secondly, ‘retention rate’ can also refer to the amount of time your alumni spend on your digital platforms, mainly your website. This is quite simple to track with the right type of tools. If there is a substantial depth of engagement (i.e., your alumni spend quite a bit of time on your website and visit multiple pages), you’ll know that your content is on the right track.
Surveys can provide invaluable insights into the success of your alumni engagement efforts. But, you do need a decent sampling of responders to get sufficient data.
If responses to your surveys are few and far between, make a point of finding out why. You may be sending out your survey prompts at the wrong time of day, for instance. Or your surveys could be too long.
Experiment, measure response rates, and optimize your survey as you go.
Tracking alumni engagement metrics will show you whether your engagement strategy is on the right track.
Start by keeping tabs on registrations, email open rates, and return visitors. Then take heed of social mentions, engagement in platform, retention rates, and survey responders. This data can be used to improve your alumni engagement sustainably.
