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Alumni E-Communications Strategy

Columbia Business School
Alumni home page, internal page and tour page.

To increase alumni participation in events, giving and the school at-large, Zehno designed an alumni community Web site and accompanying e-mail newsletter focused on driving traffic back to the site.

Columbia Business School originally approached Zehno to participate in an interface redesign for the school’s BANC online alumni community — a collection of search, directory and e-mail list tools. Recognizing that a great communications opportunity existed, Zehno recommended merging the tools found in BANC with the news, club and school information found in the Alumni Relations office site — creating a new seamless site, the Columbia Business School Alumni Web Site.

Zehno worked in partnership with the school and its chosen application development team, Darden Information Services (EDU-Link), to produce a database-driven site that met both the communications and data-collection needs of the school, and the information and usability needs of the alumni.

To ensure the successful launch of the site, Zehno drafted a cross-media communications strategy — a Flash-based site tour, direct mail and advertising — to generate excitement and encourage participation by alumni.

The school encourages return visits to the site by sending out a bi-monthly alumni e-newsletter, which contains teasers for the latest news and events featured on the site.

Alumni have responded enthusiastically, with the first three newsletters averaging a 60+% open rate and 20+% click-through rate. Traffic to the site has doubled as compared to pre-redesign levels. In the days after an e-newsletter is sent, traffic to the site peaks, nearly doubling an average day’s visits.

Click here to visit the Web site.