The Solution

Concorde Career Colleges teamed up with emfluence to create a four-part email nurture designed to engage recent Concorde Alumni in their first year post graduation.

The first email is sent to students 7 days after graduation with a, “Congratulations on completing your program” message. Within the creative, there are links for recipients to: Submit their Story (student testimonials), update their contact information, get in contact with the Graduate Employment team, and Refer a Friend. The first email of the series has averaged a 60.3% unique open rate throughout the first 9 months of this campaign.

The second email of the series is sent 30 days after graduation. This email serves as a check-in, but it is also a reminder of the resources available to those in the Concorde community. The first call to action for recipients is a link to Job Hunting Tips from the Graduate Employment team. There are also links to the Concorde Alumni Association and the latest Alumni Newsletter, a quarterly publication. The email creative also includes a link to Refer a Friend.

The third email deploys three months post-graduation. This email comes from each campus president (through variable data) and aims to be another check-in email. In addition to the Graduation Employment team and Alumni Association, there is also a suggestion to become a Concorde mentor – allowing alums to give back.

The final email of the series comes one year after graduation. Following the same template as the first two emails, there are calls to action to become a mentor, read the most recent newsletter, refer a friend, and to submit their story for a testimonial in future publications.

Since launching in February of 2017, Concorde Career Colleges have seen a 25% decrease in email unsubscribe rates. On the whole, the campaign averages a 49.2% unique open rate (91.8% total open rate).

Of all link clicks in the email series, 32.6% of link clicks were to the Graduate Employment webpage (90.3% of clicks to that specific page came from the initial email in the series). The second most clicked call to action has been the Job Hunting Tips link in email #2, which garnered 27.8% of unique clicks. Since campaign launch, the Alumni Lead Series campaign has seen just 9 unsubscribes and one complaint from 11,774 emails sent.