UC’s Marketing assists academic units to associate with their strategic stakeholders
The address has four types of databases hosted on the Salesforce platform, whose focus is on alumni. Although the bulk of the data is provided by Academic Registries and updated by UC Alumni and the different faculties, Marketing is the one that manages the databases that allow information to be segmented, according to the interest groups to be contacted.
Magdalena del Rio, Marketing Director of the university, has been on a crusade for several years. She wants the units to appreciate the importance of having good information for linking with their alumni and other strategic groups and become active users of the databases available to them.
“The faculties have been gradually capturing how important their alumni are,” he says. And he states that their contribution can be gravitating: “They can give feedback, offer tutorials, bring information, shed light on what is happening with the market outside, open up practice opportunities, job opportunities, advisory councils to improve the academy.”
“The faculties have been gradually capturing the importance of their alumni. They can give feedback, offer tutorials, bring information, shed light on what is happening with the market abroad, open up practice opportunities, job opportunities, advisory advice to improve the academy”- Magdalena del Río, Director of Marketing UC
To establish this connection, the university has a database within the Salesforce platform, which seeks to link professionals graduated from UC, and which is the result of the joint work of the Alumni Department and the faculties on the basis of the information provided by Academic Records. “Academic Records gives us the data of all the undergraduate students who are graduating every semester. And that information is complemented with the contributions of Alumni and the faculties, on, for example, activities in which they have participated and data that they have provided”, Magdalena details.
From that, they establish what interests they have, so that Alumni and the academic units can send them the corresponding information.
“What is good about this platform is that it allows information to be exchanged. You can, for example, select alumni of a certain career, of a specific age range, of a defined specialty and of a certain gender. So, you can manage large databases and segment them as you see fit, according to the needs of each unit or faculty”, explains Magdalena del Rio.
strategic mail
In this way, the university can make more efficient use of mass mailings and send invitations for the different activities of the academic units to their specific stakeholders.
Although 90 percent of the information they have corresponds to alumni, within Salesforce the Marketing Department manages three other databases: students in the fourth grade of schools and high schools, a philanthropy project, and the Vice-Rector for Communications and Cultural Extension.
In the case of fourth grade students, the Office of Admissions and Student Financing is in charge of collecting the academic interests declared by young people in the fairs and outreach activities in which the UC participates, and which remain available to the powers to contact them.
Although 90 percent of the information they have corresponds to alumni, within Salesforce the Marketing Department manages three other databases: students in the fourth grade of schools and high schools, a philanthropy project, and the Vice-Rector for Communications and Cultural Extension.
The third database is the one that is centralized in the Projects and Philanthropy Department and that records donor data.
The fourth database is a project promoted by the vice-rector Magdalena Amenábar that seeks to integrate the information on the public of interest from the different departments to manage it in a more centralized way. In addition, it has the support of the directors of Ediciones UC, Angélica Zegers; from Cultural Extension, Daniela Rosenfeld; and the executive director, Camila Rendic. “We have an interesting and quality cultural offer in the Extension Centers and other spaces. The idea is to integrate these bases to segment and focus activities on certain groups”, says the Director of Marketing.
And he specifies that it is important to differentiate a list from what a database is: “When I have a person’s rut, an email, a WhatsApp, I know if they are alumni or civil servant, that is a base. When I have a list of 800 emails, I don’t know who they are from or why I have them, and to which I send everything “just in case”, that is not a base. You have to build those bases and that is a long-term job. They are a very powerful resource for UC whose value will probably be recognized in 10 more years.”