How to Identify Lost Alumni Who are Passionate About Your Institution

As people move on from their college days — sometimes literally moving around the world, carving out careers, perhaps starting families and generally searching for their places in the world — it’s not unusual for them to lose touch with their alma maters. This becomes problematic when university advancement teams attempt to reach out and identify lost alumni like these.

Lost alumni might be visiting their alma mater’s website regularly, searching athletic scores, looking up former classmates, checking the homecoming calendar, and generally finding out what’s new at their old stomping grounds.

For universities and colleges across the country, this means they have “lost but engaged” alumni right under their cyber noses on a pretty regular basis. Wouldn’t it be nice to say, “Hello?”

But how do you do that if you don’t know who they are and can’t identify lost alumni?

With marketing automation — like Capture Higher Ed’s Behavioral Intelligence Platform — a university advancement office can communicate with anonymous visitors who are visiting their web pages. When these unknown visitors are on the site, digital content such as a popover identification form can be served asking them to update their information (name, address, workplace) or give us their thoughts (“What kind of alumni events are you most likely to attend?” … “What’s your favorite college memory?”).

This kind of CBE campaign is so effective at bringing lost alumni back into the fold because it approaches them at an appropriate time … when they are actually engaged with and thinking about their university.

This is just one example of how advancement offices can use CBE has a practical tool to solve a specific problem — in this case, identifying lost alumni. But with this kind of marketing automation, the possibilities are endless.

Identify Lost Alumni

By Kevin Hyde, Content Writer, Capture Higher Ed