Explore highlights from Hustle’s new Alumni Events Guide, including texting best practices and tips for event planning.
Engaging with alumni is a critical component of community building and fundraising throughout the year, and events are a great way to keep in touch with former students. That’s why Hustle developed our new Alumni Events Guide to help you create a flourishing text-based engagement strategy to ensure your events are a success.
This guide is a great resource for anyone in the college and university system looking to boost attendance, deepen relationships, and attract new donors. The guide includes best practices, data, and inspiration from various schools that use the Hustle platform every day. We’ve also included a guide to planning that includes stellar tactics to run a successful alumni events program.
You can download the guide here. And in the meantime, we’ve outlined a few key themes from the Alumni Events Guide below.
Why Texting Matters for Events
Text messaging as a channel sees a 98% open rate, which makes it one of the most effective means of communication. With alumni far more likely to open a text message than an email, texting is a no-brainer for inviting alumni to events, getting in touch with registrants, and connecting with alumni throughout the year. By using platforms like Hustle to communicate about events, colleges and universities can start thousands of conversations every hour and personally follow up on each one. Our guide explores different ways to boost engagement over text, including tools like personalized video, to move beyond an opened text to engaging conversations that are more likely to boost event attendance than an email or a post on social media.
Plan Ahead and Personalize
While texting alumni as part of your events strategy is great on its own, our Alumni Events Guide walks through how to plan ahead and make sure you’re getting the most out of text-based engagement. Good event promotion starts well in advance of the big day, so it’s important to consider when you want to start texting, what strategies you’ll use to engage with alumni in the run-up to your events to get them “in the room,” and how to personalize your texting strategy to different alumni segments or individuals. Throughout the Guide, we explore questions including:
- What are some engagement tactics you’re going to use? (These could be videos, emojis, GIFs, a competition, discounted registration, etc)
- How many messages will you send leading up to the event?
- How does this text plan complement our social media and email efforts?
- How will you use SMS vs. video messaging to reach your audience?
- And more!
Communicate Before, During, and After Your Event
As you’re planning your engagement strategy, it’s also important to remember that text messaging is a great tool not just to get alumni registered for events, but to share important information during and after the event as well. The Alumni Events Guide explores different use cases and examples of how colleges and universities can leverage texting to communicate logistical changes to your event, like weather delays or location changes, share what’s happening in real-time to get attendees more involved, and request feedback in the days following an event.
As you explore the Hustle Alumni Events Guide, you’ll find an in-depth look at these topics and more to make sure you’re getting the most out of your text-based engagement strategy, and running smooth, exciting events. And if you’re not utilizing texting as a way to engage with alumni, you can schedule a demo today!
