Marketing for Alumni Events: Principles in Practice

Great marketing extends well beyond the most recognizable elements — logos, taglines, creative, messaging, positioning and, yes, even beyond content. The best marketing cultivates experiences across multiple dimensions to shape impressions, influence reputation, build loyalty and bring a brand to life.

All audiences, from K-12 to Class of ’50, demand experiences. As tolerance for empty marketing continues to decline across the board, developing positive, memorable interactions is more and more essential in higher ed.

Though sometimes not considered a primary function of central marketing teams in higher ed, events offer one of the more obvious ways to create experiences and build a university brand. And in large part, great, well-conceived, meaningful events follow many of the same principles that guide excellent marketing. Clarkson University’s Cold Out Gold Out (COGO for short) offers an excellent example of principles in practice. Recognizing a unique opportunity, and with well-developed relationships already in place, Clarkson’s Development and Alumni Relations office created the event as a way to develop meaningful, memorable experiences for alumni and students.

Now in its second year, COGO brings alums back to campus (in upstate NY in the dead of winter — seriously) for a multi-day event that echoes Clarkson’s historic winter carnival while adding a full slate of activities designed to connect alumni and students through a blend of academic, leadership, professional, and social experiences. And it works … thanks to solid planning, implementation, execution and evolution approaches that sound an awful lot like great marketing in practice.

Define Success

Good marketing starts with goals. The same is true for events. For COGO, the goal was to find new ways to connect students and alumni to foster productive interactions beyond the social. There’s no simple solution, particularly with the intrinsic challenges facing a small university in rural, upstate New York. The obvious answer, reunion weekend — a fixture of many alumni operations — happens in the summer, when most students aren’t on campus, so those student/alumni connections can’t happen easily. And a big party isn’t always the answer (sometimes maybe…).

“We were looking for sustainable ways to engage both alumni and students, to connect those groups. And we know that engagement is crucial in our ability to cultivate a culture of philanthropy at Clarkson,” said Vice President of Development and Alumni Relations Patrick Roche.

With an overarching goal identified first, every decision, from the smallest logistical detail to choosing the right weekend for the event, stays rooted in the broader objectives.

Use Research to Inform Strategy

Successful campaigns, initiatives and events are much, much easier to do when you take the time to listen to your audience and learn what they want, need, like, dislike and expect. Like most things in marketing, research is the foundation for good work. In putting together COGO, Clarkson’s alumni relations team surveyed alums, students and others to find out what kinds of opportunities could work to bring people together.

“We heard over and over a genuine, mutual desire for students and alums to connect with one another—to learn from experiences, successes and failures. That really shaped our team’s approach to putting COGO together,” said Andrew Brewer, Senior Director of Development and Alumni Relations.

These discoveries paired with a wealth of other alumni-related data guided the COGO strategy. In its first year, Clarkson offered charted bus service to campus from key areas with significant alumni populations in an effort to make getting to campus easier (something that surveys revealed as a potential challenge).

Embrace Your Brand

“When our alumni think of Clarkson, most put winter and hockey at the top of the list,” Brewer said.

While it’s tempting to downplay the upstate New York winter, it’s an authentic part of the Clarkson experience. COGO offered a great opportunity to lean in to that reality instead of messaging around it. Alums came to the campus they remembered (most didn’t hang out there over summer either), and could do the things they loved all over again, all integrated in the broader university context. That, blended with the other hallmarks of Clarkson — leadership development, career and professional development, corporate connections and intense academics — rounded out a full weekend of ways for students and alums to engage. Adding in more focused opportunities for smaller groups to engage and connect, along with more philanthropic efforts during before and during the event allowed Clarkson to showcase the best of the brand while staying rooted in the broader goals.

Assess. Adjust. Evolve.

In its first year, COGO became the largest on-campus, non-reunion event at Clarkson. With 40 corporate sponsors, hundreds of alums back on campus and even more students registered for the Leadership Expo and other events COGO was, by all accounts, a major success. But, sustainable efforts require assessment, adjustment, and evolution, all of which require a clear sense of direction. Using everything learned and measured from its first year, COGO incorporated a few changes for its second year: No busses (turns out they weren’t necessary to get alums back to campus for the second year since the event itself proved worth the trip); less athletics-heavy schedule of events overall, with the emphasis instead of the rivalry game against St. Lawrence University (Clarkson won); and the biggest addition, a downtown Potsdam takeover to bring together alums and families, students and the local community. The result? Huge increase in alumni attendance, student attendance at the leadership expo, 80 corporate sponsors, and a major increase in the number of current students giving to the senior class gift.

Clarkson’s COGO shows that fundamental marketing principles and ideas can influence experiences and drive outcomes. It shows that informed strategy and thoughtful execution are always welcome in any aspect of university business.

Tim Jones is associate vice president of marketing at Clarkson University, in New York.