From the Nominator

The University of Newcastle launched its inaugural comprehensive Lost Alumni Campaign in early 2020 with the aim of improving alumni contact data and strengthening alumni connections with volunteers, donors, mentors and ambassadors.

One of the challenges of finding lost alumni is that, no matter how many emails you send to your alumni cohort, none of them will reach someone who is truly lost. By turning to social media and utilising the 21,600 followers on the University of Newcastle Alumni Facebook page, we cast a wide net that reached many diverse groups.

By promoting our Lost Alumni campaign through social media, we doubled the percentage of engaged alumni from 8.8% (13,085) to 16.5% (24,800). This result exceeded our expectations and is already in line with our 2024 top line engagement goals. The social media campaign resulted in 12,135 clicks to our Update Your Details form, 577 comments, 2238 likes, 93 shares, 245,125 reach and 1,037,345 impressions. 

These results were achieved by segmenting the campaign to target unique cohorts in the alumni community. Our primary focus was a decadal approach that used bespoke imaging from university archives and copy to invoke a sense of nostalgia in our alumni based on the decade in which they graduated.

From the Judges

The University of Newcastle used nostalgia to reach “lost” alumni. They orchestrated a robust campaign to connect with constituents by decades, reflecting on specific times in their lives. We were impressed with the planning and testing. They effectively reached alumni who could not be contacted via phone, email, or mail. Other institutions could replicate this effort.