“Make your marketing so useful that people would pay for your product!"
This adage exactly tells us what the objective of each marketing campaign should be. Similar is the case with alumni mentorship programs. Even though it is not a paid service but, if in the long run, an association aims to do so, people should love it so much that they are willing to pay for it!
For the initial days, the program should be marketed so well that it gains a lot of registrations both from the mentors and the mentees. The association should start with some star mentors who are distinguished alumni and this can then motivate more mentees to join the program.
The overall buzz around the program should such that people are excited about the program and are willing to be a part of it either as mentors or mentees.
An alumni mentorship program helps a lot of young alumni through expert guidance and gives them a chance to get amazing career opportunities ahead. A lot of effort goes into kickstarting an alumni mentorship program and there are quite a few things that an alumni association can do in order to increase registrations for their mentorship program.
Let's deep dive into them now!
Publicize your alumni mentorship program well. The first step to making a product a success is marketing it well in order to bringing it the traction it deserves. The alumni association must put forward all the appealing features of their alumni mentorship program to the alumni network and create a buzz around the program before it's launch specially. If the alumni network is clearly able to see the unique and amazing features of the alumni mentorship program, more and more alumni would want to be a part of it and it will help in getting registrations for the mentorship program. Thus, publicizing the mentorship program well is the first step to getting a good engagement and participation in the mentorship program.
A rewards program and some extended benefits for participants. The more incentives to something the more interest people have towards that thing. There are numerous mentorship programs out there but the alumni needs to get some special incentives and benefits to register for the particular program. The better the mentors the better the buzz around the mentorship program. Thus, there should be some lucrative incentives for the mentors, they could be given some special access on the alumni management portal and could even be allowed to promote their venture and such deals in order to attract a greater participation from mentors. For mentees, they could be shown how much the program will help them in getting better career opportunities. For giving some additional incentives, the alumni association can partner with sites like Coursera, LinkedIn or Udemy and provide a subscription so that the mentors can benefit even more and such incentives will boost the program a lot and increase registrations in no time!
Provide an initial training session to the mentors and the mentees for a better experience. The alumni association can work towards providing a few training sessions to the mentors in the beginning so that they know how to provide the best guidance to the mentees. Apart from that, they can be made aware of how they themselves can make the people in their circle aware of the mentorship program. The training session can tell the mentors how they can publicize the program too and attract registrations apart from tips on mentorship. The mentees can be trained to understand how they can make the most out of the mentorship program and how they should work in collaboration with their mentor. The mentees can also ask their batchmates and friends to try out the mentorship program and they can be told all these things in the training session. Thus, a wholesome training session around marketing the mentorship program for the successive iterations of the program and around gaining the most from the program must be done for the mentors and mentees.
Have a diversity in terms of mentors. The more the diversity in terms of mentors a better participation is expected from the mentees. Young alumni always want a mentor who they can relate with and who they identify with. If there is a wide variety in the backgrounds of mentors, it will help in gaining a good traction. There could be diversity in terms of gender, educational background, professional background, interests, year of graduation(age) and more! The association can be innovative and bring in a good mix of mentors so that the mentorship program looks very exciting to a wide variety of alumni. Thus, this can greatly increase the sign-ups for the mentorship program.
Showcase your distinguished mentors. Make engaging content in terms of infographics, posters, videos and more in order to showcase the distinguished alumni mentors that the association has. When the association is just starting out with their program, having some known, successful and famous faces will surely help in kickstarting the program. The association must leverage their mentors the most in order to get more registrations for the program.
Keep the sign-up process very simple. The number of clicks on the advertisement or a piece of content that the association has posted for the program isn't always equal to the number of sign-ups. There is a major drop off that happens after the audience clicks the ad. There could be multiple reasons for the same. The sign-up process not being simple is a big reason why people don't fill the form and register. Thus, the association must keep the form fairly simple and ask for the least amount of information in the first basic form. After that, the association can reach out to the interested people and take things ahead in a more personalised way.
Understand your target audience and follow up with them. Publicizing once or just sending an email once isn't enough! Apart from this, for the people who show interest on the initial posts, there is a journey till the final registration and program start that every interested person goes through. The association must follow up with all the interested people and get them to sign-up. For the people who don't show interest initially, the association can send a follow up email to check if they even know about the program and if nothing works out, a follow up through call can be done too. The association must understand their target audience and the platforms on which that audience is most active and then reach out to the alumni on those platforms.
Showcase the success stories of alumni mentorship programs. The association should highlight the success stories from the earlier iterations of their own program and from the programs worldover. This creates a good awareness about the benefits of mentorship programs and alumni actually get to see the kind of positive impact an alumni mentorship program can have in their lives and they get more inclined towards joining one. This is one of the most important ways of attracting a large section of young alumni to the mentorship programs.
Have some mentors and mentees in private mode before officially launching the program. Doing a trial run before the actual program launch is always a good idea. Not just for judging the quality of the program but also for getting a good word of mouth publicity from these people. Since they would have experienced the mentorship program first hand they would be the best people to tell others about their experience and the mentorship program. Some of these people could be some known faces like distinguished alumni whose presence could give a good boost to the program. This can be a very good step towards increasing sign-ups to the mentorship program.
Involve all stakeholders. It is important to engage with all the stake holders to build a good traction towards the alumni mentorship program. Apart from the association, the institute and the alumni network, faculty members should also be an integral part of the program. The faculty can mentor young alumni for some relevant fields and interacting with faculty members gives a good sense of reconnection to the alumni. Thus, the association should plan marketing in such a way that the faculty members are involved too. Faculty members should be showcased too. Some inspiring faculty members can increase sign-ups by a lot!
The above are some of the most important ways that every association must try to gain maximum registrations for their alumni mentorship program!
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