In today's busy world, we are always looking for tools that help us to break through the noise in the market and continue to not only be multi-channel but meet our constituents where they are. For us, texting provided a critical tool to communicate with our constituents on a realtime basis to drive further engagement through our day.
About North Carolina State University
37,500+
students
300+
degree programs
250,000+
living alumni
Challenges
NC State's University Development team hosts an annual Day of Giving to rally alumni donations.
Staff have used various outreach methods, including email and social media, to reach their quarter million living alumni. However, in 2020, they wanted to expand their communication efforts and dive into a new, modern method: text messaging.
Implementation of Modern Campus Message
NC State's Day of Giving is typically held in March, but the Development team moved it to September in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. To prepare, staff created an Insider Program that gave alumni who opted in instant access to Day of Giving information.
The NC State team notes that an important element of their Day of Giving is Game Theory. Staff members gamify giving by sparking friendly competition between colleges, programs and student organization affinity groups. They also emphaize how important even small donations are. Finally, they create a sense of urgency among donors by communicating challenges that expire in a certain amount of time and announcing when the Day of Giving is about to end.
With these strategies in mind, NC State used Modern Campus Message to segment populations and test out its Insider Program with hopes of seeing a positive impact on the Day of Giving.
Results
In the 24 hours of NC State's 2022 Day of Giving, alumni donated more than $23 million in donations and 8,230 gifts—nearly double the 2019 total.
Best Practices
The Executive Director of Annual Giving at NC State, Adam Compton, shared a few of his team’s best practices.
- Segment audiences: The content of your text messages should change depending on the recipent. Alumni should receive different messages from their parents and families, and alumni can be segmented by former major or college to further unify them, driving donations.
- Create friendly competitions: Compton and his team circulate leaderboards to showcase alumni groups who donate the most collectively. In 2022, the College of Veterinary Medicine ranked #1 on the leaderboard in the Red Division while the Wilson College of Textiles ranked #1 in the White Division.
- Involve institutional partners: Compton notes the importance of making a Day of Giving a university-wide effort. His team involved NC State’s chancellor and recruited ambassadors to support the text-based Insider Program, which helped supercharge the event's promotion.
Discover additional ways you can use text messaging to connect with alumni—and how doing so fits into the entire learner journey—in our free guide:
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About Modern Campus
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The Modern Campus learner-to-earner lifecycle platform powers solutions for web content management, conversational text messaging, catalog and curriculum management, career pathways, student engagement and development, and non-traditional student management. The result: innovative institutions engage their modern learners for life, while providing modern administrators with the tools needed to streamline workflows and drive high efficiency.
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