Aluminati Network Group has developed and launched a bespoke Email-for-Life service for alumni of the University of York.
Although the service – under the domain uniofyorkspace.net – only went live in July, it already has more than 700 registered users. But nobody is happier with the innovation than Sarah Phillips, Communications Manager for the Development and Alumni Office at York. ‘I have received numerous emails from alumni expressing their delight that this service is now in place,’ she says. ‘It has taken off with great success and we have been delighted by the membership uptake.’
Sarah takes up the story behind the development of the new Aluminati service. ‘We decided to focus our initial launch with our 2010 cohort as previously we had no way of continuing our connection with them, as their student email accounts close upon graduation.’
‘After marketing the service to our students – through the student paper, the Students Union, leaflets handed out at graduation and in their alumni/graduation packs, as well as through adverts posted on the campus digital displays – the Aluminati Email-for-Life service has proved to be an instrumental tool in email collection as well as an attractive benefit to offer our alumni. We have already managed to maintain contact with our graduates as we have never been able to before.’
She adds: ‘We are currently phasing registrations to the service across our alumni in order to manage the approval process. The administration service allows us to check on how many people actually use the service every day which is a useful indicator of popularity. We currently have over 700 users who all seem extremely happy, and we plan to phase in more alumni cohorts over the next quarter.’
Sarah was especially pleased with the attention to detail given by the Aluminati team during the development phase, prior to launch. ‘The service we have received from Daniel Watts and his team has been second to none – especially within the ‘build’ phase of the project.’
