Personalisation - An Alumni Engagement Superpower
Many schools, colleges, and universities are already harnessing personalisation in their interactions with alumni and supporters, but this is often to only a basic level, mainly because institutions lack the systems and resources to implement it cost-effectively.
So, whilst you may already be aware of the power of personalisation, you might not be sure how you can practically deploy it in your engagement activities. In this article, we will give you some useful ideas as to how you can make your communications more personalised without breaking the bank or using all your time.
Why personalise?
When it comes to your communications, it has been repeatedly proven, that having a personal approach is preferable to having a generic one. This may be obvious, but it’s critical and so bears repeating, the more personalised your message (and the approach), the more effective it will be it both getting the attention of your desired audience, and retaining it.
Starting with the most elementary example, you can make sure that every member of your audience feels valued by adding their name into any communications. Now you may already be including something like "Hi Jane" at the beginning of an email, but did you know that repeating that first name in the email title could further improve your engagement?
Including the receiver’s name in an email subject line has been shown to grab their attention. In one study, including the recipient’s name in the title increased open rates by up to 23%, clicks by 7-32%, and unsubscribers fell 11-17%! (Ariyh 2022), not bad for something that probably takes an extra 10 seconds when setting up a mailer!
Personalisation is about making a connection with your audience.
Personalisation is about creating a connection with your audience. It’s about giving people what they want and rather than just everything you have. Personalised marketing is relevant to the individual, to their needs or interests at that time.
But it isn’t just about email, it can take many forms, from social media campaigns through to personalised content on your website or in printed materials like letters and envelopes. The target is that everything looks as if it has been individually crafted for each person, regardless of whether the message was created by one person, or by a team of people working together towards the same goal.
Personalized calls to action convert 202% better than default or standard calls to action. (HubSpot 2020)
It’s not as simple as just inserting someone’s name into an email.
Whilst just using someone’s name is unquestionably better than not, that’s only scratching the surface of what personalisation can deliver. True personalisation means tailoring communications to the individual, but you don’t need to be that specific to see results.
You can achieve amazing results just based on segmenting your audience, all that this requires is to split them up into small groups, that could be based on their interests, demographic information, their previous interactions with you, or almost any other criteria.
In order to do this you will need the relevant data, that might be historical data you hold on alumni from their time with you or it could be information you’ve gathered more recently, the key here is create data fields for an information on which you might want to tailor communications.
Try to use a single central database to manage this information so there is just one place where records need to be maintained, we appreciate that’s not always possible in larger organisations and if not, you just need to be clear on which systems will be the master records for which data fields.
Detailed and correct information is the key to successful personalisation, the more detailed you can be in your data, the more granular you can be in your segmentation and the more you can personalise your communications.
It doesn't need to be expensive and time consuming to implement segmentation strategies.
Personalisation is not a new concept, but it has become increasingly popular in the marketing world over the last decade. And why wouldn’t it? Personalised content is more relevant, and effective – which means it increases engagement and a more engaged audience will be better for helping you achieve your goals.
However, personalisation does not need to be expensive or time consuming! In fact there are several ways you can implement segmentation strategies without breaking the bank:
Find out who your audience are – use your existing systems to collect information on your users, this includes things like demographics (age range), occupation and location. Short surveys can also be helpful in collecting basic information and ensuring current records are correct, although they are not without their limitations.
Find out what they like and don’t like – using surveys as well as monitoring tools, will help you understand what kind of content resonates most with different segments of your audience. For example try sending two different versions of an email to an audience segment, so half receive email A and half receive email B, then look at your engagement statistics to see which had the most interest.
Marketers who use segmented campaigns note as much as a 760% increase in revenue.
(Campaign Monitor, 2019)
Avoid these everyday mistakes.
Here are some common pitfalls that institutions need to avoid when implementing a personalisation strategy, bear these in mind so you don’t fall into them yourselves:
Poor Data quality: if you don't have good data about each person who interacts with your organisation or supports its work, then it will be difficult for you to make a meaningful connection with them through personalised emails and communications. It may also result in inaccurate segmentation strategies being implemented which can have the opposite effect to that which is desired and actually put people off engaging with you. If you’re still building up your data set or aren’t sure of its accuracy, use small scale testing or stick to more generic communications in the meantime.
Lack of Metrics: it's important that any segmentation strategy has a set of key performance indicators (KPIs), these could be open rates, click throughs, conversion rates or supporter activity, because these metrics help determine whether or not an audience has been successfully segmented. Without the feedback provided from metrics your personalisation might be wide of the mark.
Avoid the urge to cast your net too wide: if you’re running an event in a certain region then it may well be tempting to tell your entire community about it, after all, some of them may be in the area for work or family reasons at that time. It’s a valid thought and whilst it may well lead to one or two more attendees, for each of them there will be five others who aren’t in the area and are now questioning (even if not consciously) how relevant your communications are to them. By erring on the side of caution with personalisation you can be more certain of keeping your audience interested
Email campaigns segmented by subscriber activity saw a 74.53% higher click rate than on non-segmented campaigns (MailChimp 2017)
Use systems that support you.
Data gathering and audience segmentation can both be extremely time-consuming activities if you’re doing them manually. Take advantage of the wealth of systems like SocialArchive® available today which can automate those processes to give you a single central view of your audience and provide a single point of analysis after the event.
Don’t be put off by data and metrics.
As we’ve highlighted above, data and metrics are important. But don’t hold back if you don’t have everything available to do this from day one. When implementing a more in-depth personalisation approach for the first time it can take time to validate existing data, build up new information and to put in place the tools and processes to support it.
Think of rolling out personalisation in terms of marginal gains. a 1-2% improvement in every communication you send over the course of a year will add up to a significant overall change in twelve months. Build your data as you go, use opportunities like in person events to find out more about your audience, and don’t be afraid to make informed assumptions occasionally where you see trends in certain segments of you audience.
Finally, what you don’t say is just as important as what you do say.
Audience segmentation not only allows you to better tailor what you say to your audience but equally importantly it allows you to not communicate irrelevant information.
In a communication-based arena such as engagement, email remains the most effective form of getting your message in front of your audience, but it’s critical that people want to read your messages, and even more so that they don’t unsubscribe.
By using personalisation to ensure people aren’t seeing messages which are of no interest to them, you greatly increase the chances of them reading your messages when they see them, retaining that information, acting on calls to action and not opting out of receiving future communications.
Conclusion
Personalisation is an important part of any engagement/development/advancement strategy. It’s easy to get stuck in the rut of sending out generic emails and letters, but by knowing your audience as best you can and tailoring your communications to them, you can make a much better connection with them. Giving them a better experience as part of your community and supporting you in achieving your goals.