4 Tips to Enhance Your Next Alumni Networking Event
Alumni networking events are a great idea, but they often turn into a social setting with no real value or purpose. With a little extra planning, you can turn these networking events into an alumni engagement machine whilst giving attendees real value. We’ve put together our top four tips to enhance your networking events and improve the engagement levels at them:
1. Define the purpose of the event and add value
With no defined purpose, it’s hard to deliver an experience that would provide value to attendees. Sure, you might attract a groups of friends and enjoy a few drinks, but you’re not going to accomplish very much. Every networking event you hold should have a clear purpose for you organisation and for the attendees. The more specific, the better.
2. Encourage mentorship
You will find that your networking events will get a better response if you promote the fact that there is a chance to meet mentors from specific industries. Depending on the size of your alumni base and the types of industry that they work in, you want to try holding industry specific networking events. Helping to facilitate these types of mentorships add a lot of value for the young alumni attending your event.
3. Get creative with your event
Try and make your event stand out. Meeting at a popular restaurant or bar will always produce a decent turnout. But you could always take it a step further by using a unique venue or even at a mentor’s place of work. Along with being creative, make sure your event is practical. Think about things such as the location and the accessibility of the venue.
4. Measure the ROI
If your networking events are positively affecting alumni careers, they will also positively affect engagement and donations. In order to track these you need to record registration and attendance information from each of your events. You could then log this data in your alumni CRM. The fastest and simplest way to do this is to use event management technology.
At Symphony, we specialise event technology that helps you manage your event data. If you think that you could benefit from event technology, we would happily talk you through some of our features and give you the opportunity to try Symphony out for yourself.