By Sarah Huxford Camp
The recent graduate who’s feeling lost in the upheaval of moving out of the dorm to start a career. The loyal donor who’s starting to wonder if those donations are really making an impact. The recently retired alumnus who now has time to get involved in mentoring students. The community organization that has steadfastly supported the local college.
What do all of these stakeholders have in common? They’re probably on the mailing list for your institution’s magazine.
As print and mailing costs rise and higher education institutions everywhere feel the budget squeeze, you might be wondering if your magazine is worth it. But time and again, readership surveys like those conducted by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE), show that magazines are one of the top ways alumni feel connected to their institutions. Believe it or not, those numbers are even stronger among young alumni. In our digital-first world, your magazine can provide alumni and friends with a tangible reminder of what makes your institution special.
Every Issue is a Brand Experience
You know this already: your brand is much more than just a logo or school colors. It’s what people think and feel about your institution and its values; it’s their experiences with your organization. Your magazine can serve to reinforce that brand.
Every choice in a magazine, from visual design to photography, communicates a brand message. Even the paper you choose can send a message of quality – or not! Your magazine should appear high-quality, but over-the-top design or intricate printing can make donors wonder, “Is this what they’re doing with my money?”
One recent day, four alumni magazines from three different institutions landed in our mailbox on a single day. Even with the mastheads covered, I could have told you which was which! My husband’s STEM-focused alma mater featured a gorgeous cover photo of a high-tech campus building, designed to look like a computer desktop. It immediately communicated the innovation and intellectual curiosity that university is known for. My journalism school’s cover displayed a portrait of a student leaning against a distinctive architectural feature on campus. Instantly, I longed to be walking across that campus on a sunny afternoon!
Your magazine has the unique opportunity to feel unmistakably like your institution by translating the university’s character into editorial decisions.
Storytelling Makes Your Case
Your style guide may dictate the fonts or colors you use, but the stories you tell demonstrate what the university stands for. We’ve all heard the axiom “show, don’t tell,” and that’s especially true in college and university magazine writing.
An alumni profile can show that your institution still has an impact, long after graduation. A story about a current student can prove to donors that their gifts are hard at work helping students succeed. A feature on a faculty member’s research can illustrate intellectual leadership. In a magazine, you have the time and space to do something an admission brochure or fundraising postcard can’t: tell an in-depth story that truly shows your institution’s influence on people’s lives over the long term.
Print Still Matters
Your alumni and donors are bombarded with electronic messages all day long, which creates digital fatigue. Your print magazine provides a completely different, tactile experience. When it arrives in a reader’s mailbox, it can be read right away or saved for a rainy day. It can be shared with a spouse or passed along to a friend. Its feature articles create a slower pace of consumption that can feel like a welcome change from skimming emails or doomscrolling. For younger audiences who grew up immersed in technology, consuming print media feels like a conscious choice. In fact, surveys show that Gen Z consumers often prefer print books to electronic ones and are rediscovering commercial magazines, as well.
Does this mean your magazine shouldn’t have a web edition? Of course not. Whether that’s a beautiful PDF embedded in your website or, for institutions with more resources, a full-scale, interactive magazine website, a digital version of your magazine can help you reach more stakeholders in a cost-effective way. But abandoning print for all-digital, as many institutions did out of necessity during COVID, isn’t necessary as a long-term strategy.
Creating and Strengthening Connection
Through creative design and engaging storytelling, magazines communicate institutional values – and establish connection and pride for alumni and donors.
In turn, that sense of pride may encourage alumni to get involved by participating in events or advocating for the institution. Your magazine may encourage new donors to give or existing donors to give more! CASE research consistently demonstrates that alumni who read the magazine are more engaged with the institution. After reading an issue, one third say they recommended the institution to someone else, and nearly 40 percent made a donation.
Student and alumni stories are always a powerful way to strengthen connections and inspire donors, but don’t overlook the impact of a well-done donor profile. Reading a compelling story about a donor’s sacrificial gift often encourages others to do the same.
Magazines as Brand Strategy
Consistency is one of the most important elements of your brand strategy. Whether it’s an admission brochure, a fundraising appeal or the magazine, all of your institution’s communications should be emphasizing the institution’s values.
When designing admission materials, we try to reinforce our institution’s distinctives: why should a student choose to attend this college or university? What will they find here that other schools don’t offer? Your magazine should reinforce those distinctives, too, but on the opposite end of the enrollment spectrum. Everything from the news briefs to the feature articles to the alumni updates can encourage alumni and friends to remember what makes that place special and why they loved their time there.
Magazine content can be extended into other channels to reach even more audiences. A sidebar about a sweet alumni love story can be repurposed into a high-engagement social media post as graduates share their own stories in the comments and tag friends and classmates. Got a faculty member doing fascinating research? Don’t just write the feature article; film a short video to use as social content or on your website, as well.
An alumni magazine isn’t just a reflection of your institution’s brand or a vehicle for sharing campus news. It’s an opportunity to bring your brand to life by highlighting the people and stories that shape it. When a magazine’s editorial vision is aligned with the institution’s overall brand strategy, it can deepen readers’ connection to the institution and help reinforce its brand promises.
Are you looking for help executing your alumni magazine? From design and copywriting to content planning and production, let’s talk about how 5°Branding can best help your team.
Sarah Huxford Camp is a communications consultant and graphic designer with experience working with higher education institutions and mission-driven organizations.
