CASE STUDY: Chatbots to engage alumni with a 93% open rate
With a creative digital strategy inspired by pop culture, the University of Texas at San Antonio was able to engage their alumni in a brand-new way during the inauguration of the university’s sixth-ever president, garnering excitement surrounding the week of events with a 93% (!) open rate. Call It What You Want, here is how they did it.
Context
Why UTSA turned to Taylor Swift to engage alumni
UTSA is a large state research university in Texas, with nearly 31,000 students. Just like many other Higher Ed institutions, they are looking for fresh ways to engage their young alumni. This is particularly important for UTSA because a majority of their alumni have graduated in the last 20 years.
This spring, the university had a new priority to promote: a historic change of leadership as President Taylor Eighmy took the helm, and a week of celebrations around the inaugural event. Knowing this monumental event had the power to engage their alumni if handled cleverly, Heather Locke Green, Director of Annual Giving and Development Communications, decided to Shake It Off and grab this opportunity.
Heather was committed to turning what could otherwise be perceived by alumni as dry campus news into a fun and engaging moment. Inspired by how President Eighmy encouraged others to simply refer to him by his first name, she dreamt up a fun quiz tapping into his welcoming and relatable nature by associating him with another famous Taylor: the queen of pop, Taylor Swift.
With this great idea in mind, Heather’s next endeavor was to solve the logistics of actually bringing it to life. Hosting the quiz as an email survey never would have worked; there were too many barriers to alumni engagement, not to mention logistical challenges with the quiz’s functionality. When Heather learned how Funderful has opened up Messenger chatbots as an entirely new avenue for reaching young alumni, plus just how enjoyable the experience can be, she was hooked. It’s a partnership that’s Sweeter than Fiction.
Traditional channels have peaked
Everything Has Changed: In need of new young alumni engagement strategies
It isn’t just age that defines being a young alum; millennials (those in the Gen X and Gen Z generations) have grown up in the internet era. Their social patterns, experiences and even personal values are different than those of previous generations. Growing up in a world saturated by information and technology means it’s harder to influence their behavior patterns and digital media consumption habits. We need to reach them where they already are active, such as digital apps and social media channels, instead of expecting them to fit the style of traditional outreach (phone, email, and direct mail) as their parents once did.
Meeting alumni where they already are
As of 2017, internet users worldwide spent an average of 135 minutes per day on their phones, mostly on messaging apps, a 50% increase from just five years ago.
Of these apps, Messenger is the most popular. Having 1.3 billion monthly users, it is already the leading messaging app in the marketplace, and growth shows no sign of stopping.
With these statistics in mind, it would be a missed opportunity for a university not to embrace Messenger as a key additional channel for reaching alumni, current students, and potential donors.
With over 60 billion messages sent via Messenger and WhatsApp per day, messaging has become 3X more popular than ordinary texting. Furthermore, apps like Messenger allow for the use of chatbots that manage conversational engagement with alumni, rather than requiring constant inbox monitoring by a full-time employee. By tapping into the endless interactivity possibilities that Messenger offers, surpassing less tech-savvy traditional channels, universities will increasingly integrate chatbots and messaging apps into their young alumni engagement strategies in 2018.
What is a chatbot?
Derived from the term “chat robot,” “chatbots” allow for highly engaging, conversational experiences that can be customized and used on popular platforms such as Facebook Messenger. Pre-built conversational flows allow you to simultaneously communicate with your alumni in a “one on one” manner, while expanding your team’s bandwidth to focus on other tasks. With Funderful, it takes only a few minutes to build a simple chatbot and broadcast it to your alumni. Read more here.
Building the chatbot
Designing the chatbot for young alumni to make Sparks Fly
We met Heather over lunch at CASE’s Institute for Senior Annual Giving Professionals in Denver earlier this year. When we heard Heather’s idea about the “Taylor vs. Taylor” quiz, we were excited; we knew right away that Messenger could take it to the next level.
Annika Jensen, Funderful’s Social Media guru built a mock-up of a simple, fun chatbot in 15 minutes, although it could be argued that much of this time was spent just researching fun gifs of Taylor Swift. By the start of the conference’s next session, Heather was already giving the quiz a try.
We were surprised when more people started engaging with the chatbot — she must have been sharing it with her colleagues at the session. To check out a copy of the quiz hosted by Funderful, click HERE to open it up on your Messenger.
Step #1: Designing the chatbot flow
Once you have an idea for your conversation’s theme and goals, the actual design phase is the easiest part. It can take under two minutes to design a simple chatbot experience in the Funderful chatbot builder interface:
Step #2: Run targeted social media advertising
Once the chatbot experience was finalized, we partnered with the team at UTSA to attract alumni to engage with this new channel by using hyper-targeted social media ads across Facebook, Instagram and Messenger. Once they clicked the ad, Facebook Messenger automatically opened up for them and they were engaged with a bot.
Step #3: Let the alum explore the conversation at their own pace
The first thing that the “Taylor vs. Taylor” chatbot did was explain the theme of the quiz, announcing that it was in honor of President Eighmy’s inauguration. The introduction then presented alumni with an opt-in button, which began the quiz.
As the alumni selected their preferred answers, they were lead on their own path through the experience, depending on if they selected the right or wrong answer. When their time with the quiz ended, regardless of if they received a perfect score, they were presented with more information about the inauguration event as well as the opportunity to make a gift to UTSA.
Step #4: Message the subscribers at an 93% open rate
The Messenger platform considers a user to be a “subscriber” once they have engaged with a brand’s chatbot. With this in mind, the alumni who have engaged with UTSA’s chatbots are subscribed to receive informational or entertaining updates in accordance with Facebook’s Messenger policies.
UT San Antonio was then able to send broadcasts in the form of pre-built bot conversations or simple messages at any time. With this implementation, UT San Antonio has opened up a new additional channel to reach and engage alumni year round, either reaching out to all subscribers, or segmenting based on what they have previously responded.
This is The “Story of Us”… Here are the results
The results of the UTSA Inauguration campaign were stellar. It took less than one week to acquire almost 700 alumni subscribers through a minimal $250 investment on paid social advertising.
To extend this success beyond President Eighmy’s inauguration, UTSA is now able to message these alumni at a 93% (!) open rate and 12% click-through rate (5X better than emails), as an efficient way to increase awareness of events, update contact information, and even solicit donations using Messenger.
The campaign saw incredible ROI, and not only were their alumni suddenly reachable on Facebook Messenger, they were actually engaged in the outreach.
Performance Snapshot:
- Paid social advertising investment: $250
- Engaged audience: 766 users
- Cost to acquire one subscriber: $0.32 (a one time investment in social media ads)
- Average open rate: 93% (3.72x higher than average email open rate of 25%(Average Email Campaign Stats of MailChimp Customers by Industry, Mailchimp, February, 2017))
- Average click through rate: 12% (5X better than emails)
- 15% participated in the chatbot quiz
Summary
Let’s Begin Again: What does this mean for advancement?
Creativity plays an important role in your message’s ability to stand out in the oversaturated digital media age and engage young alumni in a way that feels more natural to their world. Equally important is meeting alumni on the channels where they already are active and comfortable, instead of focusing energy and budget solely on traditional outreach tactics.
Universities need to be open to new technologies, just as the younger generations are — they can be a game changer when it comes to engaging lost alumni, building relationships at scale, and raising more dollars.
“The team at UTSA loves to be innovative. I had never experienced a university reaching out to me on Messenger, so I knew Funderful had a cutting-edge idea,” said Heather.
“Working with Funderful was easy and they really made our Taylor vs. Taylor quiz come to life. Seeing the results, we are very excited to continue using this new Messenger strategy for other alumni and donor engagement opportunities.”
Director of Annual Giving and Development Communications at
University of Texas at San Antonio
Benefits using a chatbot for advancement
With chatbots through Messenger you can:
- Communicate with your alumni where they are already spending most of their time — on messaging apps
- Reach the alumni who are not reachable or are not engaging through traditional channels
- Commucate with alumni year round at 80% open rates and 5–10X better response rates than email
- Let alumni find their own path to your desired call to action and thus segment themselves automatically, so you are able to tailor the content they will receive in the future
- Integrate with other channels to improve their efficiency (for example, ask in Messenger before mailing expensive magazines to alumni)
Schools like UT San Antonio, Georgetown, West Point, Pomona and Claremont McKenna are just a few that are already using chatbots and messaging as a new channel to reach their recent alumni.
We hope this case study gave you new ideas for using new technologies to engage with and fundraise from your alumni, especially the young generation. If you would like Funderful’s help launching chatbots at your institution, or to learn more about other use cases, feel free to email walter@funderful.com or raimonds@funderful.com. You can also schedule a call with us by clicking here:
👉🏼 SCHEDULE A CALL 👈🏼
This case study was created by Annika Jensen (Director of Social Media), Walter Rivera (Head of Sales and Partnerships) and Raimonds Kulbergs (CEO) from Funderful in collaboration with Heather Locke Green, Director of Annual Giving and Development Communications at University of Texas at San Antonio.
Annika Jensen, Director of Social Media, annika@funderful.com
Walter Rivera, Head of Sales & Partnerships, walter@funderful.com
Raimonds Kulbergs, CEO, raimonds@funderful.com
Heather Locke Green, Director of Annual Giving and Communications, UTSA
About Funderful: In an age of declining email open rates. Funderful’s mission is to help universities break through the noise and engage their communities by opening up new digital channels such as Facebook Messenger and chatbots. Funderful serves universities, colleges and schools, and has offices in Boston and Riga.
