The document provides tips for getting alumni and students to engage more with a university's online community site. It suggests building relationships; offering scholarships, matching gifts, and online magazines; highlighting events and sharing photos; engaging different student groups; generating revenue through business partnerships and advertising; and including pages for future alumni, parents, and fun interactive elements. The overall goal is to get people to visit the site more often and feel more connected to the university.

1. Getting Them to Come Back
Getting Them to Come Back
Sara Beck
Product Support Specialist
Agilon, LLC

2. Getting Them to Come Back
Overview
• Build relationships between students & alumni
• Scholarships
• Matching Gifts/online giving
• Online Alumni Magazine
• Events
• Email
• Facebook Connect FAQ page

3. Getting Them to Come Back
Overview
• Photo Gallery
• Business Partners & Advertising
• Future Alumni and Parents
• Free products & Fun Things

4. Getting Them to Come Back
Who Are You Marketing
Your Site to?
Alumni – Yes that’s a given. But what
about these groups?
• Students
• Parents of Alumni
• Parents of Students
• Future Students
• Companies

5. Getting Them to Come Back
Understanding “Student”
Dynamics
Traditional students- high school graduate who
attends immediately and graduates in 4 years
But now we seeing more…
Nontraditional – those who return to college
after being in the workforce a number of years
Others students who are working to obtain
their degree while being employed full-time

6. Getting Them to Come Back
How Can You Engage
Alumni Online?
List how Alumni can:
• Volunteer
• Share experiences
with students
• Lead a local chapter
or club
• Make a gift

7. Getting Them to Come Back
Engaging Traditional Students?
• Create a Nutritionist column on
eating healthy on your custom
pages.
• Host a movie night at the
student center.
• Highlight one fraternity/sorority
each month and let them write
an article about their
organization. Send an email
message to all past members to
drive them to your site.

8. Getting Them to Come Back
Engaging Nontraditional Students?
• Babysitting service for single parents. Facilitate with
students looking for part-time employment. List this
on one of your custom pages.
• Offer events to keep them coming back to campus:
Basketball night, Homecoming social, family night
with Events module.
• Essay contest: Most challenging thing about being a
Nontraditional student. Use our Stories Page to
facilitate this.

9. Getting Them to Come Back
Engaging All Students
• Welcome new freshman by email &
introduce your office.
• Set up alerts for mid-terms/finals
weeks. Your office can sponsor study
breaks.
• Offer Seniors free webinars on how
to create resumes and how to
prepare for interviews.

10. Getting Them to Come Back
This is a great example of
using email and online
events. A webinar on
“Interviewing to get the
job” sent to seniors.

11. Getting Them to Come Back
St. Edward’s University
has a very good example
of how to get Alumni
involved.
Volunteering.
Sharing
experiences with
students.
Leading alumni
chapter.
Making a gift.

12. Getting Them to Come Back
Scholarships?
But The Registrar Already Lists Them
Give them extra information…
• Tips on how to apply for scholarships
and other financial aide advice.
• List scholarships and awards,
especially those sponsored by alumni
groups.
• Profile who received the award,
including a picture and a paragraph
about them.

13. Getting Them to Come Back
East Carolina has a very
good example of a
Scholarship Recipient.
Who received the
award? Just another
example of making
them want to come
back.

14. Getting Them to Come Back
Let’s Generate Revenue With
Matching Gifts
• Hep Services provides an online resource
dedicated to tracking matching gifts.
• Several clients have the online directory link.
If you aren’t utilizing this service, let’s talk.

15. Getting Them to Come Back
Montana State University
does a great job of driving
people to the Hep site,
with a link.
Found on the Gift
Information page, it can
be listed directly under
the matching employer
section.

16. Getting Them to Come Back
Hep customizes your page
to look seamless with
your site.
The searchable field
allows you to look up
employer information to
see if the company has a
match gift program.

17. Getting Them to Come Back
Can you tell me where on
this page to search for
your matching employer?

18. Getting Them to Come Back
How about now?
Make it visible!
A nice big button
does the trick!

19. Getting Them to Come Back
Matching Gifts
A donor might not know if their employer is
matching gift company…
Using HEP…
they will.

20. Getting Them to Come Back
Online Magazines

21. Getting Them to Come Back
Let’s Add Online Magazines!
• Just because you don’t have a
published magazine, doesn’t mean
you can’t make one.
• It doesn’t require anything except a
.pdf document.

22. Getting Them to Come Back
Let’s Add Online Magazines!
• Just because you don’t have a published magazine,
doesn’t mean you can’t make one. Any .pdf
document can be a magazine.
• Publish demographic changes from
marital status, deaths and recently moved by running
a query out of Selection Wizard.
• Create news articles from the Stories module in CCON.

23. Getting Them to Come Back
Let’s Add Online Magazines!
• Alert students/alumni of latest publication through
Rel@y, especially if they are featured in the
magazine that month.
• Save on expense of printing hard copy.
• Alumni are going to want to come and see their
name in print. Everyone loves that! 

24. Getting Them to Come Back
KSU has a great
online magazine.
Let’s see how
this is done.

25. Getting Them to Come Back
Go to Issuu.com
Upload a PDF
document.

26. Getting Them to Come Back
Browse to get
your .pdf file.
Fill in the title
and description
of your
magazine.

27. Getting Them to Come Back
Step 1:
Issuu.com
Upload a PDF the new
Select
document.PDF and press
Embed.

28. Getting Them to Come Back
Highlight the
Embed code
and copy the
text.

29. Getting Them to Come Back
Step 1:
Issuu.com
Log in as an
Upload a PDF
Admin into
document.
CCON & press
the editor on a
custom page.

30. Getting Them to Come Back
Press the Html
button.

31. Getting Them to Come Back
Don’t be scared.
It is really
simple. If I can
do this (Sara),
you can too!
Insert the code
Lo you copied
that
and press Update.

32. Getting Them to Come Back
Your screen will
look like this
when you return
after pressing
update.
Remember to
Lo
press the save
button.

33. Getting Them to Come Back
Now, that wasn’t
so hard, was it?
This page
actually looks
like an online
magazine when
you click on it.

34. Getting Them to Come Back
Add Events To Social Media
Tell your friends about events that can now be
shared on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace through
Wibiya and AddThis.

35. Getting Them to Come Back
This is an
example of a site
that links into
Wibya and
Addthis.
When the click
on the picture, it
brings up the
next screen.

36. Getting Them to Come Back
These two
products allow
you to add your
pictures and
events to these
social medias.

37. Getting Them to Come Back
Highlight Events After They Happen
• Have Alumni volunteer to take pictures at
certain events. Post events and invite Alumni
to update our Stories section.
• Notify Alumni that attended the event, via
Rel@y, that you have posted post-event
pictures. Come take a look!
• More traffic to the site and next year’s event

38. Getting Them to Come Back
Here is an example of a
school that posts pictures
after the events. I like
this idea!

39. Getting Them to Come Back
Checking Email
From Your Online Community?

40. Getting Them to Come Back
Oklahoma Baptist has a
link on their ccon site to
connect to their email
account.
Good example of
allowing people to check
email while visiting
ccon. Great idea!

41. Getting Them to Come Back
Do You Email Forward?
• Do you offer an email Forwarding service? Why
not feature this in CCON.
• No matter where you move, your friends will be
able to get in touch with you using the same
address (youraddress@myagilon.com), through
a forwarding email service.

42. Getting Them to Come Back
Ryerson University does
this. They have updated
a custom content page to
explain how it works.
Nice job!

43. Getting Them to Come Back
Email Opt-Ins

44. Getting Them to Come Back
Linking To Facebook…Love It!
• Connect to Facebook and Ccon at the same
time, by using your Facebook account.
• Make sure to include a Facebook FAQ page.

45. Getting Them to Come Back
Ryerson University does
this as well.

46. Getting Them to Come Back
An FAQ page is
important to let donors
know how this works.

47. Getting Them to Come Back
News Feed Story Page
Postings are made by the
Page Administrator and
may include:
-Title
Lo- Summary Description
- Thumbnail Image
- Link to a Web Page
- Posted By and Date

48. Getting Them to Come Back
Events Story Page
Story Description
Lo
provides information and
links for the event
Postings are made by
the Event
Lo Administrator for
updates on event
activities, agendas, last
minute details, etc.

49. Getting Them to Come Back
Sharing Memories Story Page
Story Pages may include
Lo a search of postings
Lo facilitate Postings to
Enable User
sharing
Enable User
Comments on
Lo postings to facilitate
discussions

50. Getting Them to Come Back
Photo Gallery…Pictures Are Fun!
Flickr with cooliris
• Upload Events,
Reunions, Watch
parties.
• Have Alumni take
your mascot on trips
and feature a
“Where’s
__________” section.

51. Getting Them to Come Back
Let’s Generate Revenue With
Business Partners & Advertising
Create an Annual business membership in as
a way to connect businesses with alumni across
the country. I was able to create this
membership with corporations.
• Membership 100% tax deductible
• Subscription to your magazine
• List company name, contact, logo and link
• Promote this network to all of your alumni

52. Getting Them to Come Back
Business Partners & Advertising
• Display the Network on your site and invite
other businesses to join.
• Business partners can purchase advertising
right on the alumni site.
• Bringing businesses to the site, making them
want to come back.

53. Getting Them to Come Back
Ryerson University also
has discount programs
with vendors. Here is an
example of one of those.

54. Getting Them to Come Back
Future Alumni and Parents
Future Alumni page:
• Include High School visit dates
• Scholarships for incoming freshman
• Preparing for dorm life: what to bring
Parents page:
• Financial aide websites
• Parents Association
• Parents Weekend Events

55. Getting Them to Come Back
Free products and Fun Things
• View popular pages and who’s online live, by
http://whos.amung.us/
• Get stat of popular pages, where they are from
and at what times.

56. Getting Them to Come Back

57. Getting Them to Come Back
Free products and Fun things
• http://www.wibiya.com/
• http://www.cooliris.com/
(The sites we talked about on prior slides.)
• Fun thing for people to view will make them
stay on our site, making them want to come
back.

58. Getting Them to Come Back
Questions?
Thank you for being here!