Leveraging Happy Alumni for Language Centre Success

Did you know that alumni success stories can be one of the most powerful tools in your language school marketing strategy?

Alumni testimonials not only build trust but also play a crucial role in influencing the school choice of prospective students. While leveraging alumni testimonials is a popular in higher education, it remains overlooked in the language school sector despite its enormous potential. As a result, schools miss out on the opportunity to use happy alumni to boost enrollment and strengthen their reputation.

What Makes Alumni Stories Powerful for Marketing?

Leveraging happy alumni testimonials is a vital component of a strong ELT marketing strategy. Both schools working with local students and those working with international students should have an alumni strategy in place. I’d dare say, that in the second case, it’s a priority as prospective students cannot visit the school before they decide to enrol.

What’s more, having alumni stories on your socials and websites is ideal for enhancing content engagement.

Ironically, the same principle applies to online schools, so if you’re in the online space, you’re also invited to read on!

About me: Hi, I’m Gina Rodriguez. I’m a qualified Digital Marketing Specialist and I work as a Social Media Strategist & Consultant for the language education sector . I have 25+ years experience in the English Language Teaching (ELT) industry. I have covered various roles from EFL teacher, teacher trainer to Sales & Marketing Consultant in educational publishing.

What I do: I help language schools and independent language professionals build an engaging social media presence through training, consultancy and tailored social media strategies.

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This blog post is based on the insights I shared during my presentation at the English UK Marketing Conference, where I explored how language schools can transform happy alumni into their strongest advocates on social media (and not only!)

The Power of Alumni Advocacy in ELT Marketing

According to Inbeat, “Millennials and Gen Z highly value UGC (User Generated Content), finding it more memorable and trustworthy.”

In the language education sector, this means that potential students will trust their peers more than they would trust your social media ads or brochures.

Please reflect on this:

• Alumni are your best advocates.
• They help build credibility, boost enrolment, and provide relatable insights into your language centre.
• Alumni advocacy can significantly impact enrolments and the reputation of the institution.

Steps to Build an Effective Alumni Marketing Strategy for Your Language School

Identifying the right alumni to involve in your marketing strategy is fundamental for its success. As well as, engaging with them and nurturing a relationship with those former students . Next, I’ll give you an overview of the main steps to plan an alumni marketing strategy for your language school.

1.How to Identify the Right Alumni for Your Marketing Strategy

To start with, decide on alumni qualifying criteria. What traits are you looking for in your past students that will help you achieve your objectives? Consider the following:

• Have they got a success story to share?
• Do they come from a country or area where your course sales are low?
• Have they got a strong social media presence?

These are some of the questions you need to consider when creating qualifying alumni criteria.

Once the criteria are defined, it’s essential that the academic, sales, and marketing teams liaise to identify the right alumni for the strategy. The three teams need to share information and insights to ensure a successful selection.

In a recent chat with ELT Consultant Paul Ashe, we discussed the importance of “Bridging Marketing and Teaching Teams in Language Schools” to ensure a successful marketing strategy and customer satisfaction. Catch up with the recording in this twenty-minute video to get inspired for innovating internal team communication.

2.Reaching Out and Engaging Your Alumni Network

Next, it’s time to reach out to those students who have the right profile to be your ambassadors. Ideally, reach out to them before they complete the course with you. Also, reach out to alumni from recent years and do your best to get them engaged. Some alumni may not respond to initial outreach. Persistence and offering value are key to re-engaging them.

The idea is to offer them a dedicated space where you can engage with them, and they can engage with other former students. This could be a social media group, a portal, or a social media page.

Ideally, you will nurture that space with alumni stories of career success, life achievements, and love stories! This is also the place where you can host livestreams and webinars about topics that are of value to them like student mobility, employability, cultural aspects, and even language support. By doing so, you keep the engagement with them alive.

Do engage with alumni also on social media by tagging them on your posts and stories, doing shout-outs, sharing throwbacks, and doing alumni spotlight.

3.Using Alumni Stories to Boost Your Language School’s Content Marketing

When the time is right, request their testimonials, stories, or even their support in events like open days . Their input will be invaluable in the marketing of your language school. It will be a boost for your content marketing and can be shared on social media, your website, brochures, and with the sales team to better promote your institution.

4.Showing Appreciation: Keeping Your Alumni Network Engaged

To keep a happy network of alumni and leverage their influence in your marketing strategy, make sure they feel appreciated for their contribution. Sending them a thank-you email, a coupon, or a certificate of appreciation will mean a lot to them and is really low-cost to you.

Turning Current Students into Future Alumni Advocates

Remember that every current student is a potential ambassador whose words, opinions, and advice on social media and by word of mouth will influence the choice and perception of your school by potential students.

For this reason, the best tactic is to treat current students as future partners to be able to set the foundations for an alumni network whose testimonials will be a valuable asset in your content marketing.

Therefore, take action and start building your alumni network asap! Here’s what you need to do:

1. Treat current students as future ambassadors.
2. Build an alumni network by identifying and engaging happy students.
3. Leverage alumni influence on social media through testimonials, case studies, success stories and throwbacks.
4. Show appreciation for their contribution to maintain long-term relationships.

With the right approach, you can turn alumni stories into a marketing asset that attracts more students and sets your school apart from competitors!

ACTION POINT: Start building your alumni marketing strategy today by reaching out to your top 10 alumni and inviting them to share their stories!

Happy to support you with crafting and implementing an ad-hoc alumni strategy through my 50-50 formula. My 50-50 service package is designed to help language schools create and execute a strategy tailored to their unique goals. If you want to implement an alumni marketing strategy but are short of staff or time, let’s work together to put it in place.

LET’S TALK!🗨️

Book a discovery call today to learn how I can help you transform happy alumni into your school’s strongest advocates!