Why Celebrate Career Moves?
The goal of celebrating alumni Career Moves at Louisiana Tech is to use a milestone moment to establish a meaningful connection with thousands more alumni. Louisiana Tech sought a simple, scalable process that would fit within their existing staffing structure and allow them to congratulate every single alumni job changer on a quarterly basis.
For the Louisiana Tech team, Career Moves is “where the rubber meets the road” in a digital-first approach to alumni engagement. The first time alums hear from the alumni office, it’s usually with a message of “Hey, you graduated, you got us a job, now give us some money.” Now, by celebrating Career Moves, alums first hear a heartfelt “Congrats!” from their alma mater at a significant juncture in their lives.
The Career Moves process puts the value where it ought to be – on the graduate – and conveys Louisiana Tech’s pride for their alums, even before they give back philanthropically.
How does the Career Moves process work?
Louisiana Tech first introduced the EverTrue platform to their team in early 2020. Shortly afterwards, they added the ThankView platform to their tech toolkit. In late 2020, the team added quarterly Career Moves updates from EverTrue to unite the two platforms.
Now, through the EverTrue and ThankView integration, job changes flow into EverTrue; EverTrue produces an exportable download of job changes every month; the Director of Alumni Engagement segments the quarterly list by promotions, retirements, and job changes; and a ThankView campaign is populated for each type of job changers.
Who Manages the Career Moves Process?
To ensure that the process of turning quarterly Career Moves updates from EverTrue into ThankView videos was simple, straightforward, and scalable, the Louisiana Tech team sought a dedicated staff person to manage the process. Here’s the skillset they needed:
- Super organized. (LA Tech segments and tailors their “congrats!” messages depending on type of job change (promotion, retirement, job change), and job-changers are congratulated quarterly. So, organization is key.)
- Excellent verbal and written communicator. (The Career Moves process involves scripting and delivering video “congrats!” messages to major donors who just got promoted to the C-suite, recent grads who just landed their first entry-level position, and everyone in-between. Dynamic communication skills are a must.)
- Brand loyalty. (Job changes are significant, and the purpose of Career Moves is to associate this important life moment with the alums’ alma mater. It requires positivity, sincerity, professionalism, and heavy dose of school spirit.)
What do the "Congrats!" videos look like?
After trial and error, the Louisiana Tech team realized that smart segmentation of job changers produced the best results from their Career Moves outreach. Regardless of the segmentation, the videos are personal, warm, congratulatory. Here are a few examples.
| Career Moves segment | Sender | Type of ThankView | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Assigned to gift officer portfolio | Relationship Manager | One-to-one "congrats!" video with the option to book a meeting | Click here |
| Unassigned; additional capacity/inclination indicators | Director of Alumni Engagement | One-to-one "congrats!" videos; segmented for promotions, job-changes, retirements with the option to book a meeting | Click here |
| Unassigned, no additional capacity/ inclination indicators | Director of Alumni Engagement | 1:many "congrats!" videos with the option to update contact information | Click here |
| Young alumni (grad years 2016+) | Director of Alumni Engagement | 1:1 "congrats!" videos with a request to share the job update on LA Tech's social media | Click here |
What's the ROI?
From January to December 2021, the Louisiana Tech team personally congratulated over 2,500 job changers. The outreach led to a 300% increase in overall engagement on these ThankView campaigns. And 150 job changers made an annual gift; 24 of them for the first time. 400 of them engaged with LA Tech’s Facebook posts. 44 liked LA Tech’s posts over 25 times. ThankView videos to job changers saw a 60% open rate and 37% click-through rate.
The Louisiana Tech team is now having meaningful touchpoints with hundreds of alumni every quarter. Alumni have expressed their surprise and delight at receiving a “Congrats!” ThankView from Louisiana Tech. The process works!
“Your message made my day.”
“Thank you for the congrats! Great to still feel connected to the school.”
“Thank you guys!!! You are the best!!!! #foreverloyal”
“Thank you so much for this message and recognition. My days at Louisiana Tech were the best. I played on the tennis team and had the greatest time ever. I sure do miss it. Thank you again!”
ThankView after her recent job change.
In the words of Vice President Brooks Hull, “This is the best way we know right now to start to build a relationship that’s actually based on us valuing our alumni first. Before we ever value them as a donor, we value them because of their success. And we know that the success that they have adds value to the degree that we offer.”
Catch Brooks’ three-minute overview of Career Moves at LA Tech below.
Brooks Hull, Vice President for Advancement and CEO of Louisiana Tech University, reflects on his decision to prioritize quarterly congrats for LA Tech's job-changing alums.
