“Amazing event with @EverTrue! There are some really exciting things coming to Wheaton Connect!”
Yesterday we hosted our first EverTrue Customer Summit with customers from all over New England. As you can see from the quotes throughout this post, we heard from you all that it was a great time with great takeaways. We were thrilled to give a peek behind the curtain about what is being developed here, as well as insights we have learned from our time working together. A guiding data point for the day was that EverTrue users are more likely to donate to their respective institutions. In fact, 60% of EverTrue users have donated. Who are those 40% who are using the app and not yet giving? They’re some hot fundraising leads for you!
The day kicked off with our Product team giving a presentation about our updated version of the Community product that is currently being rolled out. The new version, with deeper LinkedIn integration, is going to provide an even more intuitive and useful networking platform for your community.
“Thank you again for yesterday’s meeting! It was so awesome! I now have so many new ideas and I am so ready to dig into new ways on how to get this app out to our alumni body!”
We spent a chunk of time focusing on marketing efforts to best get the word out about your EverTrue apps. The Relationship Management team shared insights including:
- Dedicated email campaigns are critical to growing your user base. Remember: Every company in the world is marketing to your alumni through email. One email is not going to do the trick. Professional persistence is key.
- Your colleagues in your advancement office must know how to use the app and be able to send invites. These are the folks on the road meeting with alumni all the time. They need to be equipped and excited to share the app.
- Young alumni are more likely to use the app and share it with friends. Take advantage of this!
- Facebook mobile ads are now available to be targeted to both independent school and higher education graduates. We have seen schools get hundreds of new users and email addresses using this method. I will be writing an article on how to set these up and will post here shortly.
“Thank you for hosting such a great event yesterday. I came away inspired and fired up! We are going to push EverTrue more than ever and will keep you posted as to our success”
We also heard from some of our awesome partners at Phillips Exeter, Hotchkiss, and Pingree schools about what the tactics and successes they’ve had with their Community rollout strategies:
- Mike Nagel shared Phillips Exeter Academy‘s plan, which included giving early access to those grads self-identified as tech gurus. Exeter also promoted the app to reunion years first, providing an extra incentive to download by making digital access to the reunion schedule possible only through the app.
- Caroline Reilly from The Hotchkiss School shared the plan from her awesome campaign which included students winning a dress down day if 300 alums downloaded Community in a month. Read our blog post for the details of Hotchkiss’ dress down day success.
- Laurie Harding Polese and Samantha Taylor from Pingree School shared with us all their great social initiatives, including using beloved faculty members (and their newborns!) to help spread the word about the usability of the Community app.
The day concluded after breakout sessions with EverTrue CEO Brent Grinna leading us through a deep dive of why social should be an integral part of your fundraising and friendraising strategy. The concept of Social Donor Management is a new one, but it is increasingly clear that social data can make your advancement efforts ore efficient and productive. As we work with more and more customers on our newest product GivingTree, we hope to increase awareness of the power of social donor data and its importance in your advancement office.
“What a fun event! I feel inspired and so excited about the direction EverTrue is going. I know I need to connect my social and giving data, and you are going to help me do it!”
Thanks to all that joined us for the event here on EverTrue’s home turf. We are looking forward to replicating these types of events in other cities and helping support our customers in their efforts to make the most of EverTrue! Let us know in the comments below if you’d be interested in attending an EverTrue Customer Summit near you!