To keep alumni involved in your chapter, give them the chance to help the chapter and/or to help the current members of your chapter. One excellent opportunity for alumni to aid the chapter is to become a member of a committee that guides the chapter, such as the board of trustees or the housing corporation. If certain alumni are more inclined to participate in philanthropic activities, perhaps there’s an opportunity for them with your national philanthropy. Another option is creating a rush scholarship and inviting alumni members to join a committee that decides which applicant is awarded the scholarship.

Opportunities for alumni to help the current members of your chapter are also effective in keeping alumni involved. Consider holding a career fair where recent grads come back to your chapter and advise younger members about life after graduation. They can provide resume and interview tips, guidance on choosing a career path, advice on selecting courses that will be applicable in particular careers, and any other tips that will be useful for someone about to enter the real world for the first time.

For any of these options to keep alumni involved, make sure to give public recognition to alumni that participate. Be specific and talk about the benefits provided by alumni. If a member of the chapter is offered a consulting job after receiving resume and interview tips from an alumnus, state this explicitly as opposed to writing “Alumni X” attended our 2009 career fair. If the rush scholarship results in the largest rush class in the pat 10 years, be sure to publicly thank the alumni involved in this process. Whether its an announcement at homecoming, or a blurb in a newsletter, public recognition will increase the number of alumni that participate in the future.

None of these opportunities will do any good if alumni haven’t heard about them. Newsletters are an excellent tool for keeping alumni informed. For tools to help send out alumni email newsletters, have a look at GoZuus’ email newsletter feature.

Alumni like to hear about other alumni. Did someone get married or have a kid? Earn a big promotion? Start a successful business? Perhaps an alumnus achieved national recognition in a sport or hobby. Alumni feel like they relate to other alumni, so reading about their peers is interesting.

Alumni want to hear about things they remember from their time in the chapter. Thursday night’s party is nothing special, and not worth writing about. On the other hand, Polynesian Party 09, the one your chapter has every year and spends $10k and 2 weeks preparing for, is exciting to alumni because they remember how much fun they had when they were an active member. On the same token, if your chapter has been historically strong in homecoming’s karaoke competition, alumni are likely to want to hear about this year’s event since they remember enjoying that activity when they were in school.

Newsletters should also include events that alumni might be able to attend. They aren’t going to want to attend a weeknight party, but things such as founder’s day, homecoming, and brotherhood retreat are all activities alumni may participate in. Invite alumni out as much as possible. Can you do a monthly alumni night at the meal plan? Events like this are excellent because it costs very little to add a few extra plates for alumni, and there’s no loss if none show up.

A successful alumni relations program is important to any Greek organization. See how GoZuus alumni newsletters can help out your chapter’s alumni relations program.

Short monthly email newsletters allow your chapter to keep alumni up to date without overwhelming them with information. Email is the perfect format, since its simple and inexpensive. In these newsletters, keep it short and stick to the highlights. There should be no reason for any alumni to want to put off reading this newsletter until later, its short and sweet and can be read in a few minutes and removed from their inbox.

The more lengthy printed newsletters that are sent out once or twice a year should contain much more information. The topics you glossed over in the monthly newsletter should be explained in detail in the printed newsletter. This newsletter should cover every major detail in your chapter since the last printed newsletter was sent out. Some alumni won’t make time for a monthly newsletter and older alumni may not even use email, so start from scratch and don’t assume they have any prior knowledge.

To give a concrete example to this concept, lets say your chapter wins your school’s homecoming competition. In the monthly email newsletter, its appropriate to write a paragraph announcing the victory including high levels details. In the yearly printed newsletter, its fitting to discuss the homecoming victory in much greater detail. Include details such as key members of your chapter that facilitated the victory, your chapter’s most successful homecoming event, how the victory will help your chapter, how alumni were involved in the victory, and what your chapter did to celebrate. The monthly email newsletter should contain a paragraph about the homecoming victory, while the printed newsletter could easily be a 5-6 paragraph article.

For tools to help send out alumni email newsletters, have a look at GoZuus’ email newsletter feature. Tired of working with 100’s or 1000’s of alumni mailing addresses? Check out GoZuus’ ability to print address labels.

The most exciting part of this new feature is exporting mailing labels. Both members mailing addresses and parent mailing addresses can be exported. There are two format types for exporting mailing addresses: CSV and PDF. CSV files can be used with Microsoft Word or another word processor for a mail merge. PDF files are formatted to print on Avery 5160 or 8160 address labels. Sending out printed newsletters just got a whole lot easier!

Member contact information can be exported in two formats: CSV and vCard. CSV files are useful for importing contacts into Microsoft Outlook, GMail, or any other program that accepts CSV imports (which is most of them). Furthermore, you can open up a CSV file in Microsoft Excel, or another spreadsheet program, and have a local copy of your entire group’s directory. vCard format can be used for Apple’s OS X Address Book.

Exporting custom profile fields is helpful when you need a list of every members student id number, big brother, initiation number, or another piece of data that your group considers important. This data is exported to a CSV file that can be opened in Microsoft Excel or another spreadsheet program.

If you’re signed up to 5 email lists, it will look like this:
all@myStudentGroup.gozuus.com -> essential
members@myStudentGroup.guzuus.com -> essential
jokes@myStudentGroup.gozuus.com -> non-essential
sports@myStudentGroup.gozuus.com -> non-essential
parties@myStudentGroup.gozuus.com -> non-essential

Settings up email filters is slightly different in many popular email programs. We’ll go over setting up email filters in GMail and Apple Mail.

GMail

1) Click ‘Settings’ in the top right.

2) Select the ‘Filters’ tab under settings.

3) Click ‘Create a new filter’.

4) In the ‘From’ field, type the email address of the email list you are creating this filter for, such as ‘all@myStudentGroup.gozuus.com’.

5) Select ‘Apply the label’ and choose a label, ‘Essential’ or ‘Non-essential’.

Apple Mail

1) Select Mail -> Preferences from the top navigation menu.

2) Click on ‘Rules’ and then ‘Add Rule’.

3) In the ‘From’ field, type the email address of the email list you are creating this filter for, such as ‘all@myStudentGroup.gozuus.com’. Tell it to move the message to the ‘Essential’ or ‘Non-essential’ folder. Click ok and your filter is created.

For more information on using multiple email lists in your group, take a look at our post managing inbox clutter using multiple email lists. If your group is already using multiple email lists, try organizing your inbox with filters. If you’re looking for an email list solution, read more about GoZuus email lists.

To get parents started out on the right foot, it’s a good idea to send a welcome email to the parents of new members. In this welcome email, it’s best to discuss the positive aspects of your organization. Does your group have a higher GPA than the average student at your school? Do you enforce mandatory study hours? Parents love to hear their kids are doing well in their classes. It’s also a good opportunity to discuss famous alumni from your organization and past achievements that your group has been awarded.

After the initial email, staying in touch with parents is simple. A few times a semester, make an effort to send out a short email update with the latest happenings for your organization. The concept is simple – tell parents the sort of things they want to hear. Did you have 5 members achieve a 4.0 this semester? Did you win homecoming? Acquire an excellent new pledge class? Maybe one of your members got elected SGA president. Anytime something positive happens to your group, send a quick email out to the parents and watch their enthusiasm for your organization grow.

Any email list software can be used to create a parents email list. If your group is looking for a solution, GoZuus makes it easy for each member to add their parents email addresses, and the newsletter feature makes sending beautiful and elegant parent newsletters simple.

Because so many emails are being sent every day, it’s important for large student organizations to use multiple email lists. Using multiple email lists offers many benefits:

1. Emails are grouped according to their subject, allowing for easy filtering.
2. Members can pick what topics they’re interested in.
3. Fewer unwanted messages make the important ones more likely to get read.

Getting started using multiple email lists is easy. First, create email lists that are only for important messages. These email lists will be required for all members, and are used to discuss meetings, important votes, and other pertinent information.

For non-essential messages, create many topic specific email lists. These email lists may include a jokes list, an intramurals list, a poker list, etc. Members will have the option to subscribe to these lists. Since subscribing is optional, only non-essential messages should go out over these lists.

So what’s an example setup for a typical college fraternity?

Required Lists

• All List
  Every active member is subscribed to this list, and all important emails are sent to this list. Information about chapter meetings, group events, etc.
• Brothers List
  Announcements specifically for active brothers only, such as ritual discussions. Pledges are not subscribed.
• Pledges List
  Messages for pledges only, such as pledge meeting announcements, requirements reminders, and more. Many chapters prohibit brothers from subscribing to this list (except for the pledge educator).
• Alumni List
  Newsletters, homecoming information, and official messages from the chapter to alumni.
• Leadership List
  Discussion list for officers or executive board members.

Optional Lists

• Com List
  Jokes, links, videos, and other non-essential information.
• Soccer List
  Messages for the intramural soccer team.
• Social List
  Discussion list for the social committee.
• Philanthropy List
  Philanthropy events and opportunities.
• Alumni Discussion List
  Discussion list for alumni who wish to remain involved – in our experience they’ll share stories, laugh at each other, announce engagements and new jobs, and argue about politics.
• And more… create as many optional lists as your group needs!

The benefits of segmenting your email lists are tremendous. Members receive all of the important emails, and their inbox isn’t filled with junk they don’t want to read. If your group has a system that allows for multiple email lists, try putting this strategy into effect and see how your communication improves. If you’re looking for an email list solution, read more about GoZuus email lists.

First, select a target email list. This can be a list consisting of group members, alumni, or parents. Next, you’ll have the option to choose a news story to use as the basis for this newsletter. If you choose a news story, the content for this newsletter will be pulled from the news story, and you’ll have the option of using a picture from the news story as the picture for this newsletter. If you don’t choose a news story, you can upload your own photo and type your own content.

On the following page, select a photo and input some text. Generally 1-2 paragraphs is a good amount of content for a short newsletter. On this page, you can optionally choose additional news stories to include in your newsletter.

The hard part is over! Now, just review the newsletter and select one of the templates on the right hand side. The preview updates in real time to show you what your newsletter looks like with the different templates. After you’ve selected your favorite template, click send newsletter and you’re done!

1. Set the Cache-Control http header.
2. Make S3 urls expire at a consistent time.

Setting the Cache-Control header tells our web browser that the cached image is valid and that it doesn’t need to check for an updated copy of the image on the server.  Making the url expire at a consistent time gives our images that are the same a consistent url, so our browser doesn’t get confused and think they are different images.  For example, image.jpg?expires=100 appears to our browser as a different image than image.jpg?expires=101.

Set Cache-Control Header in AWS S3

The technique we use for setting the Cache-Control header was originally posted in this guide. We’ll enhance the AWS::S3 store method to add a Cache-Control header that’s 10 years in the future if there isn’t already a Cache-Conrol header present.  The first step is to create a file in your lib/ folder and name it s3_cache_control.rb.

# Adjusts the cache control to the maximum value of 10 years (315360000 seconds)
module AWS
  module S3
    class S3Object
      class << self
        def store_with_cache_control(key, data, bucket = nil, options = {})
          if (options['Cache-Control'].blank?)
            options['Cache-Control'] = 'max-age=315360000'
          end
          store_without_cache_control(key, data, bucket, options)
        end

        alias_method_chain :store, :cache_control
      end
    end
  end
end

Make S3 URLs Expire at a Consistent Time

We’re going to make generated S3 URLs expire at a consistent time by overriding attachment_fu’s authenticated_s3_url method.  You can view the original authenticated_s3_url method.  We’re going to override it to add an expires option in there isn’t one present.  Place this code in lib/s3_cache_control.rb.

require 'technoweenie/attachment_fu/backends/s3_backend'
  module Technoweenie
    module AttachmentFu
      module Backends
        module S3Backend
        def authenticated_s3_url(*args)
          options = args.extract_options!
          options[:expires] = Time.now.advance(:minutes => 5).end_of_day.to_i if options[:expires].blank? and options[:expires_on].blank?
          thumbnail = args.shift
          S3Object.url_for(full_filename(thumbnail), bucket_name, options)
        end
      end
    end
  end
end

You can set expires to whatever value you would like, as long as its consistent.  In our case it made since to do it at the end of the day. But it could be at the end of the hour if you didn’t want photos cached long, or at the end of the week if you wanted them cached longer.

Now just add these two lines to your config/environment.rb file and you’re set:

require 'aws/s3'
require 's3_cache_control'