Boosting Alumni Engagement with Automated Email Journeys
Client Overview
Concorde Career Colleges is a multi-campus network of career-focused institutions that provide hands-on training programs designed to prepare students for roles in healthcare and other in-demand fields. With campuses across multiple states, Concorde supports students not only through enrollment and graduation, but well beyond—maintaining long-term relationships with alumni as they enter the workforce.
For Concorde, alumni communications play an important role in reinforcing community, supporting career placement efforts, and encouraging referrals. To do that effectively at scale, the team needed a structured, consistent way to stay connected with graduates after they complete their programs.
The Challenge
After graduation, Concorde’s alumni weren’t consistently engaged, despite being a valuable community of professionals and potential advocates. Without a systematic follow-up, alumni relationships relied on assumptions and occasional manual outreach, missing structured opportunities to re-engage graduates, gather testimonials, and support job placement follow-ups.
The Solution
Concorde partnered with the emfluence Marketing Platform to design and launch a four-step automated alumni email journey that runs in the first year after graduation, delivering timely, relevant messaging without manual sends.
The workflow sends:
- Post-graduation congratulations (7 days after) with links to submit stories, update contact info, engage with employment services, and refer friends.
- Check-in messaging (30 days after) highlighting career resources, job-hunting tips, alumni association links, newsletter access, and referral options.
- Campus-president outreach (3 months after) with reminders about engagement opportunities and mentorship.
- Year-later touchpoint reiterating mentoring, newsletter access, referrals, and story submissions.
By automating this series, the team ensured every graduate received consistent messaging relevant to their stage—without ad-hoc list management or manual sends.
Results
Since the campaign’s launch:
- 49.2% average unique open rate across the series with exceptionally strong engagement.
- 25% reduction in unsubscribes, signaling better audience relevance.
- High click engagement on key CTAs like job resources and employment links, underscoring the value of targeted content at each lifes cycle stage.
Only 9 unsubscribes and 1 complaint were recorded from 11,774 sends, demonstrating refined audience targeting and messaging.
Why emfluence
The emfluence Marketing Platform enabled Concorde to set up a scalable, automated alumni communication framework that keeps graduates engaged beyond graduation without ongoing manual effort. The result is a predictable, repeatable process of reinforcing community, encouraging referrals, and driving deeper long-term engagement.