Alumni Relationships in the Electronic Age: An Assessment of a Permission Based E-Mail Campaign.

E-mail is seen as an inexpensive, fast way to communicate with university constituencies, especially alumni. The next logical stage for the use of this Internet technology is the development and evaluation of permission based e-mail (PBE) campaigns. In this paper, we directly examine recipient evaluation of PBE in the context of a university alumni association's relationship program. Results indicate that age, gender and current involvement with the alumni association influence evaluations of PBE. Additionally, even though recipients choose to receive e-mail communications from the alumni association, this does not necessarily mean that e-mail is the preferred means of communication. We also found a counterintuitive finding that older alumni, especially females, evaluate e-mail communications more positively than younger and older males as well as younger females. Implications of our results as well as directions for future research are presented..  In the University environment, electronic mail (e-mail) has been used as a communication tool with prospective students (e.g., Tapp, Hicks and Stone 2004), as a mechanism to assess persistence among current students (e.g., Duggan 2004-2005) and as a means to maintain connections with graduates (e.g., Olsen 2003). For alumni affairs offices (AA), which have historically been charged with maintaining communications with alumni, e-mail offers an opportunity to reach targeted individuals while reducing printing and communication costs. In this paper we assess alumni attitudes and the relative effectiveness of an AA e-mail communication campaign designed to cultivate long lasting relationships (e.g., Hart 2002). E-mail, and in particular permission based e-mail, is a potentially potent strategic communication tool that can efficiently leverage the use of the Internet. Permission based e-mail (hereafter referred to as PBE) is e-mail which is sent to a recipient only after the receiving individual has authorized the organization to send them follow up e-mails (Krisnamurhty 2001; Godin 1999). PBE falls under the broader umbrella of an AA communications program. Though many PBE communication programs are intended to move constituents toward a donor phase (e.g., Olsen, Keevers, Paul and Covington 2001), the interests of this particular university is for the AA to develop a relationship with alumni through PBE. Recent research concerning the use of Internet communication technologies in the nonprofit sector has suggested that the incorporation of these technology tools is important (e.g., Hart 2002) and has provided guidelines on how to incorporate these technologies (e.g. Gomes and Knowles 2001; Hooper and Stobart 2003; Olsen and Frazier 2001) as well as noted its adoption on outcomes such as donations and volunteer participation (Burt and Taylor 2000; Olsen et. al. 2001). However, no research to date has directly examined the influence of PBE on recipient's evaluation of these communications as well as whether there is preference for PBE recipients for e-mail over printed publications as a means of communication. Clearly, an understanding of the effectiveness of electronic communications is warranted, especially as PBE is expected to become a more integrated component of a nonprofit's strategic communication programs (e.g., Bhagat 2004), and before organizations begin to eliminate printed publications. In this paper, we present the assessment of the effects of an ongoing PBE relationship building initiative for a large university alumni association. The purpose of the study was to directly investigate alumni segments and their attitudes and preferred usage of PBE. We first provide a discussion of recent work on the role of the Internet for nonprofits, which includes several key variables that are likely to influence evaluations of PBE. Within our discussion of recent research, we develop our research questions. Following the research question development, we present a description of our study and discuss our analysis and findings. …

Field of study: Education