What Is Alumni Management Software?
The truth is that many alumni networks are still using spreadsheets. Over time, it's natural that all those spreadsheets become useless. It seems that you just can't find what you are looking for when you need it. Well, this only means that you need an alumni management software like Flowlu.
With this kind of alumni management software, you can finally eliminate most of the administrative work that takes you so much time to complete. From taking donations to creating your website, managing alumni, and running events just to mention a few can now be done in a faster and easier way when you are using a software like Flowlu.
What Is Alumni Management Software?
Overall speaking, an alumni management software allows you to stay in touch with your alumni, engage with them through communications and events, and ask for donations.
When you are looking for the best alumni management software, you need to know that most CRM systems in the market can be used for this purpose. This is the case with Flowlu as well. But unlike other CRM systems, you can easily integrate a wide variety of apps that you believe can be useful to manage your alumni network.
The Best Alumni Management Software Features
As we already mentioned above, you can use almost any CRM system to manage your alumni network. However, there are certain features that you need to make sure the CRM system that you pick includes.
The main features that an alumni management software needs to include are:
#1: Contact Database
When you want to use a CRM system for your alumni network, you want to make sure that it can collect and store the data you want and need. For example, with Flowlu, you can easily create web forms and display them on your website. As soon as someone fills them out, the information will be immediately sent to our CRM system. But more than this, you can actually decide on the kind of information that you ask your alumni. You may ask about their preferences, interests, hobbies, job positions, or anything else that you believe is important.
After you collect the data, you can then categorize it according to your needs. For example, you may want to create a separate list for alumni who have specific job roles or positions. This can be easily done in Flowlu. The main goal of doing this categorization is that it will be easier for you to deliver the value each alumni is looking for.
One of the best things about using Flowlu is that you can edit any information you need. An alumni may have changed jobs, or he may have discovered a new interest. You can make these modifications with just a couple of clicks.
#2: Reach Your Alumni According To Their Preferences
One of the main goals of using a CRM system for managing your alumni network is to help you build and maintain good relationships. To do this, you can use email or phone. No matter what you prefer, and especially what your alumni prefer, you can do it within Flowlu's platform.
As soon as you reach Flowlu's platform, you find an email inbox that you can use for all your communications. No matter if you're just getting in touch with a donor or with a list of alumni, no matter if you're sending the email manually or creating an automated email, everything is possible with Flowlu. The best part is that all your communications will be stored as well. So, when you are looking for a specific alumni, for example, you'll be able to see all the details about him as well as all the communications that were conducted.
In case you prefer to use the phone, you'll be glad to know that you can easily integrate your telephony provider with Flowlu. Just like with the email, all the phone calls will be recorded and you will be able to access them in case you need to.
#3: Allow Your Alumni To Reach Each Other Out
If you want to make sure that your alumni network stands out, you may want to allow your members to reach each other. However, we're not talking about Facebook groups or anything of that kind. We're talking about communicating inside our CRM system. From sharing ideas to helping each other out, and getting to know more about them, you only need to come up with the rules.
#4: Keep Your Finances On Track
Between getting more and more alumni to your network and keep sending them high-value, you also need to have time to keep your finances on track. Again, Flowlu can help. You can use this CRM system to know where your network stands at each point in time. You can see all the donations that were made, the expenses that you have (both regular expenses and extraordinary ones), and a lot more. You may even use automation to get financial reports on specific days, for example.
#5: Make The Most Out Of Your Events
Events are an important part of all alumni networks. They can be not only a good place to get donations for your network but they can also be very helpful for your alumni.
When you are using Flowlu, you can easily create an event and share it with all your alumni. In case you want to make it a registered event or even a paid one, you can easily do so with our CRM system. After all, it is easy to create and manage invoices, not to mention that you can receive payments as well. In fact, you may decide on the payment methods that you want to integrate with Flowlu. There are many available and we are certain that we offer the one you want.
#6: Easy Accessible & Low Cost
When you are looking for good alumni management software, you may notice that some are a lot more expensive than others. What happens is that up until a few years ago, CRM systems could only be used by large companies because they were the ones that could afford them and had an IT team always ready. Fortunately, you can already find some CRM systems that are more affordable. In most cases, this happens because they are cloud-based, just like Flowlu. This ends up reflected in the price as well as in the low maintenance.
Bottom Line
There's no question that an alumni management software can be a great help for alumni network managers. With all the features they include, you can finally dedicate more time to what is really important - nurturing your alumni.
While there are many different CRM systems on the market that you can use for your alumni network, Flowlu is the best one. And the best part is that you can even try it for free.
