PUTTING YOUR STORY TO WORK:

BEST PRACTICES FOR COMMUNICATING TO

YOUR ALUMNI

Megan Costello

1Welcome to the presentation “Putting Your Story to Work: Best Practices for Communicating to Your Alumni.”

After you review a slide, click anywhere to advance the presentation. To exit the presentation at any time, press the Escape Key. To go back to a previous slide, press the Backspace Key. Click to begin the presentation.

This presentation was given live on April 30, 2015 by Megan Costello, Assistant Dean for Communications. It is part of a training series coordinated by L&S Administration, intended to connect L&S faculty and staff with topics and information that may be helpful in their positions. More presentations and information about this series of trainings can be found at https://kb.wisc.edu/ls/page.php?id=25131

Megan Costello 2

Today 3

Why communications? Targeting Tips to help you Discussion and Reporting your

turn!

Today’s agenda will cover best practices for communicating with your alumni.

Megan has two staff writers on her Advancement Team and she reports to Susan Zaeske, Associate Dean for Advancement . The office does work on general release, news, and media relations, but their goal is help produce communications targeted specifically to alumni and friends. That is why the portfolio of work they do in terms of press releases is a bit smaller than what you would see in other schools and colleges. This is a deliberate choice to make sure they are using their resources effectively, especially at a time when state funding is decreasing and they are looking at alumni and friends to become involved.

The Advancement Team also includes a creative designer and photographer, who may be available to departments for events. Although Megan can’t promise the photographer can attend all events, please contact her if interested. The team is small so she understands department resource constraints.

When a chair, director, or staff member contacts Megan, they usually want to talk about communications. They always ask when they should do it and what they should do. She tells them to first focus on the “Who” and then pick what they can do and decide what they can’t. It is important they know they can’t do everything.

Targeting will be the main focus of today’s talk. Then tips to help get you there, followed by interaction time for discussion and reporting.

Advancement

communicate > reputation

engage > relationships

call to action > resources

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1 2 3Credit: Libby Eckhardt, Chief Communications Officer, OSU College of Arts and Sciences

The Advancement Team works closely with the Wisconsin Alumni Association and UW Foundation. It can be described as a three legged stool.

1) Communicate to strengthen the reputation you have, talking from a position of strength and building on that infinity.

2) Engage people to deepen relationships with alumni and friends.

3) Make the call to action, ask people to give us their time, their money, and their resources. (The three T’s: Time, Talent, and Treasure).

Our time together

communicate > reputation

engage > relationships

call to action > resources

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1 2 3Credit: Libby Eckhardt, Chief Communications Officer, OSU College of

Arts and Sciences

Communication is the most important step to get to the call to action. Alumni express to Megan all the time: “You only call me when you want money, you never send me something on how important the department is, or ask me to contribute a note to the newsletter.” She wants departments to think about how to get from Step 1: Communicate, to Step 3: Call to Action.

Why?

Strengthens engagement

Motivates desirable actions

“Right thing to do”

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Communication is the rain that softens the ground. Survey research has shown that communication

motivates desirable action and makes it easier to get to Step 3 (Call to Action). Stewardship is the

right thing to do!

Targeting 7

We can think about targeting by looking at 3 demographic donor profiles. These targets (and the profiles) are based on survey research from several different resources. This research was obtained from the College of L&S, UW Foundation, Alumni Association, CASE (Council for Advancement and Support to Education) and other Higher Education institutions, specifically dealing with advancement communications. Your constituencies may vary, but this is a place to start comparing what your targets might look like.

The 3 demographic profiles are: 1) Our “everyone” – Joe and Jane Badger

2) Our “pipeline” – Alan Alumnus3) Our “leadership donor” – Becky Booster

Our “everyone” Joe & Jane Badger 200,000 alumni,

overwhelmingly Bachelors graduates

Middle-aged Primarily live in

Wisconsin Strongest

connection to UW overall (80%+)

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Example: John and Tashia Morgridge made the largest single contribution to the UW Madison ever in November 2014. They gave a $100 million gift devoted to funding faculty, and providing a one-to-one match for endowed chairs and professorships. John’s first gift to the university was made more than 30 years ago to the Department of Computer Sciences for less than $100.

L&S alumni are about half of all living alumni. This “broad base” is the people to target your newsletter towards. Some departments are more represented than this, such as Political Science which has about 17,000 alumni.

Out of 200,000 alumni about 77% have received their bachelors degree, pretty evenly split between male and female, 20% are in their 40’s, 19% are in their 30’s, and between 15-17% are in their 50’s and 60’s.

35% of alumni live in WI. Depending upon department, most live in WI. Then the breakdown is pretty steep, with MN, CA, IL, and NY under 9%.

Survey after survey shows that alumni’s strongest connection is to UW Madison itself. When you ask them, they identify themselves strongly as a Badger at UW-Madison first, next they will share what their major was. That is why it is important to identify with Joe and Jane, they will respond to things that are red, because they love the university! They are really drawn to the entire contiguous campus and the university brand. When thinking about alumni communications you should absolutely be leveraging the university brand.

Joe & Jane Badger9

Communications keep them connected to campus.

They prefer print (overwhelming!). They want to read about:

History and traditions Campus news (esp. science, technology and

engineering) Issues in higher education Faculty research Alumni news

They want to believe their major/degree is strong. They want to know that UW is advancing.

When thinking about the best practices with newsletters or event invitations, think about the overall university. Overall university materials are available for free, things like a new logo design or letterhead, you can work with University Marketing or contact Megan directly, she would be happy to talk to your department or chair about using the “UW Red Branding.”

Preference for print is increasing, if you have capacity, print is worth it. Alumni want to place something on their coffee table.A question to ask yourself is, does it pass the coffee table test?

CASE has gathered data from several surveys and readers from On WI were also polled: students are middle of the pack, but still recommend putting them in the newsletter. Things at the bottom of list are: faculty retirement, publications, and donor profiles.

Faculty research is important because alumni have a lot of pride in the research power of this institution. It is important in your publications to lead with a story about a professor or scholar who is doing something innovative, while keeping it short, not more than 3 paragraphs. In L&S, we try leading with that person first for the impact effect. When thinking about your Joes and Janes, it is helpful to take off your interdepartmental hat and put on your own. When you receive mail at home from an organization you support or your own Alma Mater that you may only hear from 2-3 times a year, what is going to make you open that up and look at it? Alumni want to know it is from UW, they want to feel happy and proud, and hear their degree is great and their department is strong and advancing. You want to build on that pride and infinity!

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Things to keep in mind on your publications when thinking about your Joes and Janes: Don’t fill with a lot of text, instead include lots of pictures and LOTS OF RED!

Ok to use University Stock photo, cost is $15 each. The photo may be unrelated, but it teases out other stories inside.

Don’t see a lot of departments successfully doing more than 12 page newsletters on a deadline driven schedule that keeps working every year. If more than 12 pages, they fall off or struggle to fill the pages. 8 pages works best!

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One strategy could be to also send your publication digitally. Currently there is not an email marketing tool available through UW, but some departments use “Constant Contact or “Mail Chimp.” It is important to include the strong UW branding again, to encourage your Joes and Janes to open it. Best practice for dimensions is one half of the size of an “Inside UW Madison” page, also include an image and some links to your websites. What you don’t see is the full story, instead they are basically teasers, keep it really short!

Many departments send a print newsletter once a year, and then in spring they want to send something by email. That is good way to think about your Joes and Janes, although some departments can’t do both digital and print, set your sights on what you can actually do. These tools cost money! There are also lots of challenges with email integrity. For example, L&S has only 50% of their alumni’s emails. However, there’s been a push to have students register for their free UW Alumni.com email when they graduate.

One of the things digital provides is information about reading habits and real time data right away. The program offers an analytics dashboard, you can see how many people click, where they click, how long they were reading it, and it provides data to help make decisions. But you will need: 1) Someone to build the templates, not necessarily coding more like drop and drag editors 2) Someone to get the email list 3) Someone to import the email list 4) Someone to find pictures to make it look pretty 5) Someone to look at it afterwards. For many departments this is tough to do, anyone thinking about email marketing, please check with Megan first. These systems don’t interact with alumni databases, which poses a challenge since we need to be careful to prevent alumni spamming.

Our “pipeline” Alan Alumnus Annual donor Married men Modest about his

giving Wants to display his

Wisconsin pride Appreciates ongoing

communications from the areas where he makes his gifts

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Example: Let’s narrow down from our Joes and Janes -- who are the stakeholders to get you towards steps 2 (engage) and 3 (give)? They can probably make a bigger difference than your Joes and Janes by giving back time, talent, and treasure in a consistent way year after year. These are people who have taken a demonstrated action to make a gift to your department. It could be your scholarship donors, giving to your community funds or your discretionary funds. They may lapse a year or two, or may have given once and never gave again.

His age is about 40-50. Survey data shows modest gift of under $500, around $200.

Wants to hear latest news about what they support, be a little more specific with this group of people when communicating.

Alan Alumnus13

He wants a timely response for his gifts and appreciates ongoing communications.

He keeps letters, awards, certificates and small tokens.

He likes personalization (story, handwritten, hand-signed letters).

He learns about the impact of gifts through personal letters, newsletters, publications, emails and the alumni magazine.

Need to do timely stewardship with thank you letter response time of 6 weeks. These donors need to know their gift makes a difference!

Doesn’t need to be hand written letters, however hand signing letters is important.

Example: For the L&S Annual Fund, Dean Scholz sends out thank you letters every month. When the quarter closes, the UW Foundation sends a trigger reminder, then Megan pulls a list of donors who have given under $25,000. To thank them again, she sends them an email touch, which also contains links to stories showing how the fund was used.

Need to think about what your premium type gifts are and when to reward. Don’t just send lapels or pins to everyone, instead send only to milestone donors like those who been giving for 10 years.

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With the help of their Board of Visitors, the Department of English used this newsletter to highlight their discretionary fund. This snapshot was created by a graduate student to showcase how the gift made a difference. This could be something included with your thank you letters. Impact first!

Chemistry published this newsletter around Thanksgiving. The largest amount of gifts come in December (70%-80%). If you thinking about sending a Thanksgiving email, please check with Megan first, many emails go out at this time, so you don’t want yours to be lost in the pool.

Our “leadership donor” Becky Booster 1982: joined WAA

and made a $100 gift 1980s-2001: modest

annual giving ($100-$150)

2001 to 2015: major gifts Became a Career

Mentor Planned an estate gift Looking to join a

board

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This group is based on people giving over $1,000 from one fund for a set period of time. Your Becky Boosters are constituents who should require a high level touch with a high value, impact for their giving of time, talent, and treasure!

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The next two slides contain an example of a special letter sent by the College of L&S to a small group of 10 leadership donors.

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Becky Booster and her husband made a leadership level commitment so she was one of the 10 leadership donors to receive the special letter from Dean Scholz with the enclosed thank you letter directly from a student supported by the L&S Annual fund. They also still received their monthly thank you letter. A portion of the annual fund is designated to support 20 Freshman Scholar Achievement Awards, which is an unmet need in college. Megan worked with her colleague, Alison Rice, Scholarship Coordinator, to send out this special letter. After obtaining information from the scholarship portal, Megan was also able to put together a really great impact story about these awards to show how the gift was used and how it made a huge difference in these students’ lives.

It takes a lot of time and effort to identify your Becky Boosters, but it is worth it. It could be your “Gold” standard, the special thank you letter only needs to go out to 10 people from your leadership donor group. You need to have your chair/director sign off on it, have the information available to put together, package it up to send out.

In response, Becky and her husband wrote back to Dean Scholz and stated “This differentiated UW Madison in our philanthropic efforts.” She and her husband are currently very involved in their local hospital and other health organizations where they live. By sending this high value, high level letter to this small group of people like Becky Booster and her husband, they are now even more engaged in many things at UW Madison, such as: becoming a Career Mentor, planning an estate gift, and wanting to join a board.

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The question is what fund to focus on for your Becky Boosters, it is best to choose just one fund, like your annual fund. Then you can pull a list of donors who have given over $1,000 over a set period of time from the UW Advancement Resources website in fund management. This is your most specific target, not like your Joes and Janes. You want people to be really excited about UW Madison and have it become very meaningful to them like Becky and her husband. As a result of this, they are now contributing a lot of work to the UW. You can get there, but it takes time.Next you need to think about how all these groups differ (Joe and Jane, Alan, Becky) and who are the people you want to focus on moving onto the next level.

In your communications to the leadership donors, the language is special, stating academic excellence. These people know they are special because they are giving a larger gift and also giving to several other places on

campus. You need to make them feel you know they are special too!

Tips to get you there19

Focus20

Joe? (all alumni) Alan? (pipeline) Becky? (leadership donor)

Where to start?

How can your Board of Visitors or other staff in your department help?

Where should you put your time and effort in to make the biggest difference?

Step 1: Create a content calendar

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Create a set of annual communications. Who receives it? When? From what channel? (Email? Social?

Print?) Clarify responsibilities and

roles. Who will write it? Send it? Post it?

Conduct assessment and review. Did it work? How much time did it

take?

The first thing Megan does when she sits down with a chair or department staff, is find out what the department is doing already for their Joes and Janes, Alans, and Beckys.

Very important for someone to take responsibility. Megan does not recommend doing this by committee. You need to have clear roles who is doing what or things won’t happen! This seems to be a problem in every department.

Assess and review, email provides data. If you have a print newsletter, ask your alumni to submit notes for it. Remember this is considered impact! Then see if it worked and how much time it took. These things will help to make decisions on what you can and can’t do.

Content Calendar Example 22

This content calendar was created in Excel. It can be used for tracking to show differentiation and consistent timely stewardships.

Step 2: Create content that works.

Good content is consistent. 2x/print newsletter, 2x/e-newsletter Timely stewardship Personalized gift impact reporting

and communication Good content is clear and

concise. Good content leverages UW

pride. Good content communicates

positivity and strength.

23 Although this would be the best practice, no department in L&S can do this given our limited resources. It is difficult to do both print and digital, so if you can only do one, that is ok.

Don’t include doom and gloom or internal politics, keep it happy! Engage alumni in your mission, you want them to feel pride, talk from a place of strength. Especially during these difficult times on campus, it is really important for us to show the UW is strong and advancing.

Discussion24

Should be using existing UW Madison’s news releases, some of the most dynamic newsletters out there are not rewriting content, they are pulling from stories and events which have already happened. Even if it is a research story from January, just update it and repackage. Feel free to use content Megan’s team writes or contact her for help with editing.

Social media can be a useful tool, LinkedIn works great for getting news out there. You can also contact WAA’s Dave Nelson, he has students available to mentor departments on how to create LinkedIn pages. It works best for your Joes and Janes, but may help you to also identify your Alan and Beckys.

Consider Joe & Jane, Alan and Becky

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Where is your department excelling? Broad-based alumni communications? Pipeline building? Major gift stewardship?

What are the easy wins and the low hanging fruit with your alumni?

How has (or could) your department get involved in these communication efforts?

You may want your Board of Visitors to advocate for you, but need to balance how much they are involved and manage those expectations appropriately. Impact statements are good, start with asking the board for feedback on specific things, like their 3 favorite topics on the newsletter.

Some departments have faculty gather alumni around conferences. It is important to establish talking points for them, like tuition and budget status. This will prepare them for any questions that may arise.

Groups at each table took a few minutes to breakout and discuss how one or two of the things above were happening in their own areas. Afterwards, they reported their ideas and challenges to the larger group. The reporting from the breakout session is listed on the next slide.

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Reporting: Megan went around to each table and asked them to share their discussions, the groups reported below:

• Would like to start using the content calendar and focus on doing a better job of following up with timely stewardship. Very challenging working in small departments with little or no support staff, have incorporated graduate students to help write thank you letters. Email inconsistency is a problem, especially when many alumni are international and have less compulsion to respond.

• Challenges of small departments that don’t have majors and trying to get started with limited staff, or with undergraduate and graduate programs with no staff support.

• Discussed differences within each organization and things they are doing well, like timely stewardship and sending out thank you letters after receiving reminder from UW Foundation.

• Not having undergrad majors represented, challenges of identifying who their alumni are in centers and institutions.

• Need to update their newsletter content to make it less boring or contain more items like: current student news, more red or Bucky focus, and more pictures. Going to strive to send newsletter out on a more regular basis and also try to reach out to alumni of all ages.

• Identifying donors when some of the largest donors in departments aren’t even alumni. Working with students of color from low income background who often may not have had positive experiences on campus. Try to cultivate relationships for them while here and bring back alumni to potentially become mentors for students currently enrolled. Psychology student alumni dinners may have around 30 alumni attend with 15 returning almost every year. Just received their biggest $2,000 donation from someone there with another donor matching it. Really building on the value of alumni for current students to show them alumni do come back and spend their time and talent which potentially may lead them to give us some of their treasure.

• It is vital staff in departments connect to talk about this so there is a consensus. By default many people, especially chairs, think that everything leads ultimately to treasure, while building community should be the first and foremost important thing to do. Time and talent may lead to more tangible things and it appears offensive if you are too obviously aiming at treasure all the time. Even though building community may never lead to treasure with the vast majority of donors, it doesn’t mean people aren’t really giving back to the UW in many other valuable ways.

If you are thinking about email marketing, it is a challenge and could prove more work than it is worth. Please consult with Megan before tackling this.

Summer is a good time to update letterhead for thank you letters, can work with University Marketing if interested in updating your logo .

In terms of Becky Booster, the work both her and her husband are now doing, like engaging with students and getting involved with career mentoring, are the type of things that will pay back in dividends over decades. Building community is really important and it helps to pay it forward. Alumni always refer to that club, that class, or that person who helped instill that sense of community in them, which again proves the importance of carrying it forward.

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“I need help.”27

Let’s talk. We can:

pull data and reports,

narrow/identify your target,

review your current communications, and,

steal other people’s ideas.

Megan recommends this book on how to take other peoples ideas and shape them into your own. It’s not about copying someone else’s ideas, more about how to steal them and make them better. Megan is happy to come to your department to talk about any of the topics covered today or have her staff writer help in any way. Please feel free to contact her to set something up.

Goals today:A) For everyone in groups to talk to each other to learn what is happening in different departments. B) To help you think about your universe more strategically and go back and talk with each other at your department about how you can make these things happen.

megan.costello@wisc.edu@meggo_costello

Thank you!28