Alum email addresses are now considered as very hot commodities by your university/college alum association and advancement office.
Email is a cost-effective, efficient and easy way to develop and nurture mutually beneficial relationships with alums.
So, how do you get these email addresses?
There are 2 different options to harvest these valuable addresses:
- you can ask your graduating seniors to give you their personal email addresses before they kiss their alma mater good bye;
- you can offer your graduates to keep their edu email addresses forever and ever.
In a recent post “Cutting off your graduates email addresses!” on the vendor blog Wired Communities, Don Philabaum makes the case for the email-address-for-life option:
“It’s no surprise that while students are on campus they get attached to their email addresses. While students have alternate Yahoo, Hotmail and other addresses they use during their college years, many campuses create a system that requires them to use their campus email address to participate in tools that provide class lectures online, networking opportunities to study with fellow classmates etc.
So if colleges are forcing students to use the assigned email address while they are on campus, why do they so blithely cut their email address off when they leave?”
Good point.
It definitely makes sense for students who didn’t use email a lot before going to college.
While most of younger graduates/students haven’t fully adopted their edu email addresses and kept using the email accounts they grew up with, will they be interested in the opportunity to keep their underused edu email addresses?
The question is really about the value of university/college email addresses for alums – not for alum associations or advancement offices.