Creating a First Destination Survey That Gets a Response
Mary Claire Salmon
Alumni data is invaluable for enrollment marketing, program review, fundraising, and much more–so it comes as no surprise that over 80% of institutions seek to collect information on their grads using a first destination survey. But while first destination surveys are useful, they also pose a challenge. A survey leaves you at the mercy of whether your alumni will actually take it, and not–as many do–let it slide to the bottom of their inbox.
One way to circumvent this problem is to use a platform like Alumni Pathways that collects the information alumni are already sharing online about their professional achievements–without the need for surveys. However, surveys still serve as the only way to tap into alumni sentiment data, an essential source of insight for colleges and universities.
That’s why we’ve drawn from our experience helping institutions streamline and enhance their first destination surveys, and summarized it into six strategies for keeping your response rate high:
Make it short
Make it accessible
Make it worth their time
Know WHEN to send it
Know WHO should send it
Show how it benefits your institution
1) Make it short
It’s easy to understand why surveys should be short: when you ask people for a favor (and filling out a survey is a favor), they’re much more likely to follow through if it only takes a few minutes of their time. What’s not so easy is writing a short survey. Understandably, every member of the staff and faculty will have questions they want included–whether it’s about alumni’s current salary, favorite class, or overall satisfaction with the cafeteria food. But keeping it short is crucial for getting a good response rate. After all, it’s much better to receive 1,000 responses to a 10-question survey rather than 10 responses to a survey with 1,000 questions. Take the time to discuss with your team what information will benefit your institution the most, and implement skip patterns to get the most relevant information in the shortest amount of time.
2) Make it accessible
You’re much more likely to see a high response rate when you make it easy for your alumni to access the survey. In addition to the usual suspects–email and snail mail–it’s important to think creatively while strategizing how to make your survey accessible. For example, try creating a QR code for your survey, and then put it everywhere your alumni will see it. Include it on the program at Commencement, for when your grads are waiting for the ceremony to begin and have nothing else to do. At alumni events, try putting it on the backs of place cards, the inside of bathroom stalls, or on the presenter’s first presentation slide as people settle into their seats.
If you make your survey ubiquitous, it will be almost impossible for involved alumni to not take it. While this step requires some creativity, it can be invaluable for getting high response rates.
3) Make it worth their time
One of the best ways to get alumni to complete the survey (though not the cheapest) is to give them something that will make it worth their time. While most people will surrender ten minutes for the reward of a Starbucks gift card, there are still plenty of incentives that won’t be as hard on your budget–and that can even have the added benefit of increasing alumni engagement.
This could look like offering an extra seat at Commencement, a ticket to your school’s upcoming musical or athletic event, alumni swag, VIP parking at alumni events, or a discount at the bookstore. Finally, if your institution tends to celebrate high ratings, help your alumni understand the correlation between their feedback and ranking systems. After all, the more esteemed your institution is, the more valuable your alum’s diploma will be.
4) Know WHEN to send it
Sometimes, the quality of your alumni survey results will depend on when you send it. For example, students graduating with degrees in STEM are more likely to land jobs before graduation day, making Commencement a good time to collect information about their employers and starting salaries. Liberal Arts grads, on the other hand, tend to take a little longer to find and settle into their field of choice.
This is why it’s important for each program to be strategic about the “when”: while May might be the perfect time to survey your nursing students, you’ll get more meaningful data from your English grads if you wait until fall or winter to ask them about their career. For best results, you can always get professional advice about when your survey should go out.
5) Know WHO should send it
While QR codes and events are a great way to increase response rates, the widest possible net you can cast is through email. What many institutions don’t recognize however, is that it’s crucial whose email address the survey is sent from. Why? People are much more likely to open an email from someone they know, and for good reason. We’re all familiar with the exhausting waves of pointless emails that flood our inboxes each day. Most of this mail seems to come from people we’ve never met, at companies we have no recollection of giving our address to. In this landscape, it’s all too easy for your survey to get lost in the shuffle, even if it is from your grad’s alma mater, and especially if it’s from someone your alum has never met.
Instead, be strategic. Have the favorite Literature teacher send the survey to your Liberal Arts grads; to reach your alumni in STEM, ask the beloved math professor. She’ll be happy to if you make it worth her time (especially if she gets to choose one of the survey questions).
6) Show how it benefits your school
In the same way that your survey will be delivered to an inbox oversaturated with emails, it will also be delivered in a world oversaturated with surveys. Even the Taco Bell drive-through is desperate for the answer to “How did we do?”. But not all surveys are equal in value, which is why you need to help your alumni understand why your survey is worth their time.
Explain to alumni how their feedback can help the next generation of students understand the career possibilities of specific degrees: what jobs they could get, where they might work, or how much they could make. Show them that their opinions make a difference by demonstrating how you’ve listened to alumni feedback in the past. This can be as simple as saying: “Last year you said _____, so we did ______.” (Of course, the more efficient your institution is at implementing student feedback, the easier this step will be–so you may want to consider using a time-saving alumni survey tool to eliminate the lag between feedback and action.)
When colleges and universities listen to alumni data, they improve, and so does the quality of education for each new generation. So help your alumni understand that when they make their voice heard, they are contributing to something genuinely worthwhile.
Conclusion
Alumni feedback is an essential ingredient in the recipe for continuous improvement. The more effective you are at collecting, visualizing, and disseminating that data, the better equipped you’ll be to meet the evolving needs of learners and demonstrate your value to prospective students.
Lightcast’s Embark first destination survey is designed to help you do just that. However, a first-destination survey is only the beginning–as students continue through their career paths, the value of their educational foundation becomes even more evident. For this long-term perspective, institutions can combine in-depth surveys (like the National Alumni Career Mobility survey) with data-driven software tools (like the Alumni Pathways platform) to get a holistic look at alumni success.
If you would like to learn more about how Lightcast can help you access and employ your alumni data, reach out–we’d love to hear from you.
