Alumni Market Research

Alumni market research is one of the numerous strands of education market research which we at VoicED specialise in. We have worked with a number of universities, colleges, schools and other learning providers to engage and poll their alumni in order to understand the value added by the university or other organisation, alumni destinations and alumni attitudes towards their alma mater.

Alumni market research (whether a quantitative alumni survey or through qualitative discussions and case study interviews with alumni) can help education institutions in a number of ways, including:

•    Benchmarking alumni satisfaction against other institutions
•    Increasing alumni engagement and partnerships with alumni
•    Ensuring communications to alumni are better targeted (i.e. through segmentation)
•    Understanding alumni perceptions and utilising those to develop the offer for current and prospective students
•    Case studies and stories from alumni relating to their success, which can be used in marketing materials (with consent)
•    Optimising and focussing resources on what matters most to students

Depending on the specific project, we are able to conduct alumni studies across a range of methodologies, including online, by telephone and self-completion for instance.

Alumni Market Research – Case Studies

A recent example of a project carried out by VoicED researchers involved a joint online and paper self-completion survey which was sent to alumni from a major Russell Group university. Around 10,000 responses were received and our researchers created a detailed segmentation of the alumni population based on a range of factors and based on a statistical analysis of the data.

We have also conducted a survey with UK-based alumni of non-universities, for instance a sixth form college based in the North West.  In this instance we utilised an email to online survey approach.

Internationally, we have conducted alumni market research with graduates of a major UK-based distance learning provider, including both qualitative and quantitative research, as well as with students who studied at a major global chain of colleges and graduated several years before (making them more difficult to reach due to changing contact details etc.). In both cases we were able to ensure robust base sizes on which to conduct analysis.