When building an alumni network, people often overlook key questions like “How do I create an alumni database?” “How can I connect with alumni?” “How do I grow an alumni association?” and “How can I connect with alumni on LinkedIn?” Addressing these questions early ensures a strong and engaged alumni community.
And naturally, the starting point of building any strong alumni network is accumulating and organizing an alumni database with whatever information is available.
While it is fairly simple to build and manage your alumni database on excel sheets, there are some downsides of it which are:
- Lack of automation: There is no automatic updation of alumni profiles
- Disconnected workflows: Excel Sheets are not connected with social media platforms and email engines used for alumni connect.
Small Alumni Offices find it challenging to build a large alumni database, wonder what tools to use and how to network with alumni. They are often caught in the alumni database vicious cycle explained in the below picture:
Build and grow your Alumni database
With these few hacks, you can now not only build and grow your alumni database but also manage it efficiently across platforms.
Peer-to-Peer Invite
One of the simplest yet most powerful ways to connect with alumni is through peer-to-peer invitations. If you have an alumni database of 100 members and encourage them to invite their batchmates, the network will grow exponentially. This strategy ensures rapid alumni database expansion in a short time. Plan campaigns that inspire your connected alumni to bring their friends into the network.
Harness Social Media Channels
With almost everyone on social media, platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn make alumni connections seamless. The challenge of identifying alumni by their full names can be overcome by leveraging existing members to add new ones. Social media also enables institutions to design engaging campaigns that attract alumni and encourage them to join the network.
Showcase the Benefits
Alumni are more likely to join when they see the value of being part of the network. Running campaigns across multiple channels—social media, emails, and newsletters—highlights these benefits and attracts alumni participation. A strong outreach strategy helps build a loyal and engaged alumni database.
The best hack to build a huge alumni database is by leveraging powerful Alumni Platforms!
An alumni platform actively grows and nurtures your alumni network. With cutting-edge technology, it manages your entire alumni database without investing a lot of time and effort. That’s Right. Rather than finding multiple tools to build your database, invest in a good alumni platform and get things going smoothly on the same.
The powerful mailing engine, social media integration and advanced automation on the AlmaShines Alumni Platform will grow your alumni database strategically and efficiently. With a single platform, you do not need to invest in multiple tools. It allows you to:
- Automatically update alumni profiles (stop spending time on excel sheets)
- Managing social media platforms and groups from a single point (stop juggling between various pages)
- Strong and better alumni connect with a powerful mailing engine.
Read: How
Ahmadabad University grow its alumni database by 50% in 1.5 years?
You can take a free demonstration of AlmaShines Alumni Platform and see how your alumni database grows efficiently.
January 02, 2025
