In 2021 and beyond, alumni organizations are increasingly adopting sophisticated modern technologies that enhance their effectiveness. Tools like cloud-based CRMs, marketing automation, and data analytics, are quickly becoming more commonplace in the world of higher education. At the same time, more novel technologies are beginning to have an impact on alumni relations activities. Chief among them? Artificial Intelligence (AI).
While it may not be mainstream yet in alumni relations, AI has a growing number of applications in alumni engagement, advancement, and more.
If you’re already skeptical, take a look at how AI underlies so many routine aspects of our lives in ways we don’t even realize! Perhaps most prominently, chatbots are now one of the go-to ways for consumers to receive customer service. By 2019, 40% of large companies had adopted one intelligent assistant or AI-based chat robot, and by the end of 2020, 80% of entrepreneurs were using chatbots. AI also enables customized marketing messaging for almost every major brand – in 2020, 60% of marketers planned to leverage AI - and that’s only the tip of the iceberg!
From supporting better product and service development, yielding optimization in manufacturing, facilitating the logistics of supply chain management, and streamlining financial fraud detection, the business sector is driving innovative applications of artificial intelligence technology as we speak.
As AI is adopted at record rates in the commercial sector, industry leaders, entrepreneurs, technologists, and innovators are also beginning to explore its widespread applications in nonprofits, universities, schools, cultural organizations, and more.
In the world of alumni engagement, AI has enormous potential that we’re only beginning to tap into. From saving staff time, generating fresh insights, personalizing content at scale, to enabling more intelligent fundraising, alumni relations had much to gain from considering the potential applications of AI:
1. Save Staff Time & Enhance Alumni Services with a Dedicated Chatbot
Chatbots have quickly become the foundation of customer service in the commercial world. Also known as “conversational AI,” these bots are increasingly sophisticated and handle requests and questions from clients, as well as offer advanced assistance with processing healthcare claims and negotiating mortgage rates. By 2025, it’s likely that AI will power 95% of customer interactions.
Already, chatbots are starting to take higher education by storm. As Inside HigherEd has reported, universities initially launched chatbots to serve specific units or departments, such as financial aid, IT services, or the library, but “now institutions are looking to deploy chatbots with much broader capability.” Increasingly, colleges are harnessing chatbots that serve as an entry point for students or alumni to ask any number of questions and direct them to resources outside the scope of any one department. Companies like AdmitHub, which started by offering chatbots to streamline the admissions and enrollment process, have seen a heightened demand for conversational bots that touch “all stages of the student's college-going experience from the first expression of interest in an institution to enrollment, retention and even alumni relations.”
So, how can chatbots help alumni engagement?
To begin with, chatbots can help with soliciting and updating alumni contact information. Traditionally, maintaining an updated record of alumni data has been a time-consuming task, but automated bot prompts can ensure graduating seniors and alumni are regularly invited to share their latest contact information.
Chatbots can also aid short-staffed alumni relations teams in providing top-notch interactions and direct alumni to career services, specific academic programs, and more! This can save valuable time while efficiently assisting alumni in navigating resources across the university.
2. Gain Fresh Insights on the Student-to-Alumni Journey
Another part of artificial intelligence that could potentially transform alumni engagement is machine learning. In particular, machine learning tools can help generate fresh insights that will allow institutions to understand and improve the student-to-alumni journey and cultivate more loyal alumni.
Already, innovative colleges have deployed machine learning and augmented analytics to predict academically at-risk students and aid in student retention. For example, Ivy Tech Community College leveraged their Google Cloud Platform to collect 12 million data points from student interactions. They then developed “a flexible AI engine to analyze student engagement and success.” By examining key data points, like how often students logged into their learning management system and their class attendance rates, the college was able to flag struggling students with 83% accuracy.
This example illuminates the early possibilities of AI to analyze student behavior. Such forms of predictive analytics also have enormous potential to help universities understand the relationship between student engagement and alumni loyalty later down the line. For example, do particular on-campus services yield higher alumni engagement? Do certain markers of student engagement during the college years – such as participation in on-campus clubs, leadership activities, study abroad experience, or use of academic support resources – result in more engaged alumni five, ten, or twenty years later? Just imagine gaining a holistic view of the journey from student to alumni. Not only could universities predict alumni engagement and inclination to give, but they could also start making data-driven decisions to refine on-campus services, career resources, and alumni relations activities to yield consistently engaged alumni with a high lifetime value.
Already, businesses are using machine learning to predict and grow the lifetime value of their customers. Moreover, universities are utilizing machine learning and other predictive modeling tools to help optimize discrete processes related to enrollment, student retention, and alumni engagement. It’s only a matter of time before institutions leverage more sophisticated algorithms to understand the entire student journey and harness these insights to maximize alumni loyalty, engagement, and giving.
3. Deliver Hyper-Personalized Value at Scale
We’ve talked about the importance of personalization in alumni engagement, and artificial intelligence is an increasingly important part of this! The commercial sector has already spearheaded the use of AI to enable automated, hyper-personalized content. This is essential, since 80% of consumers are more likely to do business with a company if it offers a personalized experience.
Artificial intelligence can be key to truly engaging alumni in a customized, one-on-one capacity. AI and machine learning-powered platforms can collect data in key areas around alumni behavior, social media activity, and evolving career interests, allowing you to deliver curated communications, volunteer and giving opportunities, and event invitations to each alumna. At a time when so many universities rely on outdated information about degree programs or majors to segment alumni years after graduation, these types of dynamic personalization capabilities will become increasingly necessary to achieving your engagement goals.
This isn’t just futuristic speculation – AI is already here, transforming commercial industries and higher education at this very moment! Applications of AI to personalize alumni communications are likely to skyrocket in the next few years, so now may be the time to start exploring these tools.
4. Enable More Intelligent Fundraising
Increasingly, alumni relations offices are becoming integrated with advancement departments, and alumni engagement goals are often inextricably related to donor cultivation. For this reason, it’s vital to explore the rise of intelligent, AI-enabled fundraising.
In 2020, 85% of private institutions reported a loss in tuition and fee revenue. At the same time, universities are investing incredible financial resources to mitigate the effects of COVID-19. When so many universities are in financial distress, cultivating and soliciting the right donors has never been important.
AI is a game changer here! According to the Stanford Social Innovation Review, AI can be deployed in a number of ways to facilitate more intelligent fundraising, including to identify prospective donors from internal data sets and social media platforms, and to “analyze donor data and suggest how to personalize appeals.”
Technology platforms like Gravyty have already begun to tap into the potentials of AI in higher education advancement by offering innovative tools that help fundraisers identify the best donors to solicit, frame the appropriate ask, and understand donor behavior.
As alumni relations and advancement staff search for ways to be more effective in their outreach and stewardship, we’re likely to see an explosion of smart fundraising in the coming years, made possible by AI!
While it may be easy to assume that an AI-powered future is a long way off, it's already here! AI is not just a shiny buzzword, and it’s not just for the commercial industry. Applications of AI can radically transform alumni engagement and advancement, so now is the time to start exploring how it can enable, simplify, and streamline your operations.
Let’s get in touch! Request a demo or reach out to hello@cuseum.com to learn how Cuseum can help you supercharge alumni engagement.