How To Build A Corporate Alumni Network: 8 Steps To An Engaged Community
Just think of Uber, for example. Founded back in 2014, Uber is a corporate alumni network that generates billions of dollars every year. If you see this as incredible, what if we told you that this informal corporate alumni network has found other impressive companies throughout the years?
So, are you ready to start your own alumni network? Keep reading to discover how to do it.
How To Build Your Alumni Network
Step #1: Gather Your Troops
The first step to start building your alumni network is to gather a team to execute your program. Although you may not have a team, the truth is that will certainly increase your chances of success. Notice that to make it even better, you should have a manager as the responsible person for the team.
Step #2: Choose The Best Platform:
Now that you already have a team (and possibly a manager), it's time to find the best platform for your alumni network. Flowlu CRM is perfect for the job. This platform isn't only scalable that ensures that you'll be able to manage a growing alumni network, but it's also great for engagement.
Flowlu features a completely personalized dashboard to ensure that every user can use it the way they need and want. But more than this, when using Flowlu, you can easily get all the analytics and reports you need. You can get real-time insights to make sure that you understand your users, the most relevant activities, and how they engage with the rest of the network.
One of the best things about using Flowlu is that you can not only recruit alumni but you can communicate with them directly on the platform. You can even automate some of the communication and make it as personalized as you want.
Step #3: Take Your Target Demographics Into Consideration
With your team working with you and Flowlu on your side, it's time to start building your corporate alumni network. If you're wondering where you can start, just think about current employees, ex-employees, new recruits, retirees, freelancers, contingent workers, and even seasonal workers.
As you can easily understand, all these groups have different needs and wants in terms of how they can benefit from joining the network. This means that your team will need to come up with unique personas for each group so you can then send the right message. They can do this by accessing information that is centralized in Flowlu. Information such as contact details, job position, where they live, their struggles and goals, and the type of content they prefer, among others.
Step #4: Don't Forget About Informal Alumni Networks
An important step that you shouldn't forget when building your alumni network is to check if there aren't any alumni networks already. It may occur that some ex-employees may have created one already. If this is the case, you should take the first step to reach out, introduce them to your alumni network, and invite them to join by explaining the benefits.
Step #5: Make The Joining Process Special
Whenever someone signs up to join your alumni network, you want to make sure that you get the most information. Don't only ask for the basic contact details or job role. Explore more. Ask about what they're looking for, and what they want. Take the time to explain the benefits of joining your network.
Step #6: Don't Forget The Exit Process
The truth is that someone, from time to time, for one reason or another, may want to leave your alumni network. And when this happens, you want to be ready to learn more about the reasons.
What most alumni networks do in these cases is that they just make a small box available where people can tick so they are unsubscribed from the alumni network. However, this is something that you can do better since it may help you maintain more subscribers in the future. In addition, if you already spent so much time inducting and training an employee, the least you can do is to ensure that you can stay in touch.
Step #7: The Marketing Part
One of the most important parts of building your alumni network is to make it known. So, you need to come up with some marketing strategies to spread out the word about your network.
One very simple way to do this is to include information about your network in your employee onboarding process. Mention the benefits they can experience while working with you. They may get some training or mentoring, for example.
It's important to keep in mind that you want to ensure that they stay with your network forever. Therefore, it's also important to mention they can still be a part of it and benefit from it in the case they leave your company.
You can do this easily using Flowlu. You can send personalized emails or even use telephony using solely Flowlu. And the best part is that all communication established can be accessed later on if you want to.
Step #8: Keep Track Of Your Progress & Get Feedback
When you decide to build an alumni network, you want to gather as many users as you can. But you also need to keep them engaged all the time. This is why keeping track of your progress and getting feedback is so important.
With both reports and feedback, you can get a better perspective of how your program is working. With Flowlu, you can easily get the reports you need. And while there isn't a direct feature or function that allows you to get feedback from users, you can simply send a personalized email with a survey, for example.
Bottom Line
As we mentioned at the beginning of this article, building and maintaining an alumni network isn't easy. However, it's worth every single second. You'll be able to grow a tight community. To start with the right foot, you want to take Flowlu on your side. After all, this CRM is perfect for the job. It has all the features that allow you to both build and maintain your alumni network as well as it is completely scalable. And if you're thinking about the price, don't worry. It's pretty affordable and you can even try it for free without the need of adding a credit card.
