Alumni Relationship Building for Colleges and Universities

An Interview with Professor Vijay Mahajan

By Tania Tolstoshev

Professor Vijay Mahajan is the John B. Harbin Centennial Chair in Business, McCombs School of Business, The University of Texas at Austin. He has written extensively on marketing strategy and marketing research methodologies for national journals such as Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Marketing and the Harvard Business Review. He is co-author and co-editor of seven books, including the recently published Digital Marketing: Global Strategies from the World's Leading Experts, and the upcoming Convergence Marketing: Strategies for Reaching the New Hybrid Consumer, available in October, 2001. Dr. Mahajan is the recipient of numerous marketing awards, and in 2000, the American Marketing Association created the annual Vijay Mahajan Award for Career Contributions to Marketing Strategy in his honor. Dr. Mahajan is also passionate about nonprofits, and Convio spoke with him recently regarding how institutions of higher education can better build relationships with their alumni by implementing some innovative online marketing strategies.

Convio: How should colleges and universities be thinking about building relationships with their alumni?

VM: Information technology is what will empower these organizations to take their conversations with constituents to the next level. This means overcoming physical constraints in order to make all of a school's resources, both academic and non-academic, available to its alumni. For example, it would be wonderful if Web site visitors were able to view the artifacts in a university museum online. What if an alumnus in Brazil could have an online view of his school's football games, and could converse with players and coaches through the Internet? Alumni could stay in touch with their favorite professors, and participate in online classes. All of these are ways to keep students involved as alumni once they have left the physical boundaries of the campus.

Convio: Can you provide additional examples of how information technology can be applied to alumni relations?

VM: Technology allows for much more immediate communication with alumni. Traditionally, after a student graduates, there is a long incubation period during which the school has no communication with the graduate. This period, on average, can last for several years, at which point the school must make an effort to find and contact these lost alumni, and renew interest in their alma mater.

Technology can be used to turn students into alumni before they even graduate -- by sparking their interest in online university programs and creating giving programs tailored to their interests. For example, online chat groups can be created for different graduating classes and existing major donors can be encouraged to give a small amount in the name of each graduating senior. If one donor gave $10 for each senior in a graduating class of 4,000, that gift of $40,000 could be rewarded with the honor of naming the class after the donor, for example the "Vijay Mahajan Class of 2002". This would create a cohesive class spirit, and these seniors could then be sent online updates regarding the gifts in their names. That way, once students graduate, they are immediately engaged in communication with the school. This 100 percent penetration will eventually stabilize to a level much higher than the level achieved by searching for lost alumni after several years of silence between a school and its graduates.

Convio: What other advice can you give to colleges and universities working on building alumni relationships?

VM: Personal contact with alumni is still needed. While alumni like the speed and ease of the Internet, the decision to give to a school is still an emotional one and building individual relationships is still important for encouraging that decision. As a rule, larger universities need to better target certain alumni they have historically ignored such as liberal arts majors and female alumni. These populations should not be overlooked but instead, they should be targeted with information about their particular areas of interest. For that reason, online personalization and database segmentation based on interests become very important. Above all, make donors feel like every contribution to the school is valued and important, and that the school has valuable services to offer its alumni in return.