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Data Requirements

Purpose

Define any integrations or data that must be included in the solution.

Functional Requirements

Purpose

Capture the desired functionality to be completed in this build cycle.


Current State

  • Programs are sending communications to alumni themselves. Therefore, SPS alumni receive emails from three different sources: Columbia's central alumni department, the SPS alumni team, and the program itself. This creates several problems:
    • There is no control about how often emails go out.
    • There is no consistent look to emails across programs.
    • Programs use their own alumni lists, which may not be consistent with other teams' lists.
    • If an alum opts-out of emails from one source, it may not be shared with the others.


Desired State

  • Alumni team will make final decision on send dates in order to control frequency of emails.
  • Slate will become the default platform for all alumni communications in order to create consistency of appearance. (Collaborate with the communications team to come up with email templates. Have some default starting language.)
    • Main templates: 
      • All school
      • Program templates.
      • Events (invitations)
      • Announcements
    • Design Goals:
      • Ability to insert photo between text.
      • Looks different on mobile vs. pc.
      • Break communications down into different sections.
      • Visually appealing with lots of links to connect people to the alumni webpage.
  • Records will sync slate with alumni database to become more data compliant.
  • Logic in communications such as newsletters based on the population receiving it to determine what content they are seeing.


Populations

  • The alumni team needs the ability to send targeted newsletters to the following populations:
    • All alumni - The alumni team sends a schoolwide newsletter every two weeks. For additional emails need to be able to filter by:
      • Graduation year/range
      • Program
      • Geography, etc.
    • Faculty - All full-time and faculty and active part-time faculty receive a modified newsletter.
    • Select staff teams (teams that have overlap with alumni in the course of their work - e.g. admissions)
    • Donor population - Donors who want to be included (separate from parents and alumni). This data can be pulled from university database. Mostly listed as prospects or previous donors. The Alumni team wants to be able to send thank you letters to these donors.
    • Precollege program alumni/parents - for both fundraising and financial aid. This list doesn’t exist in any database. The alumni team should obtain a list within a month or so of program completion. They would send their first message in October. They would like to be able to filter the list by last year the student attended. They are mostly only interested in parents for the last few years.
    • Students who are scheduled to graduate  - The alumni team wants to email soon-to-be alumni.
    • Guests - Non-columbia people or people from another branch at the school who are interested in activities at SPS. Prospective students as well. Manual upload.


Notes

Programs should be able to send emails but should not be able to upload their own lists.

People are considered alumni if they have 24 credits and have attended Columbia for at least 1 year..

Faculty has a very high reading rate.

Alumni newsletter is designed first. Will feature alumni spotlight, faculty spotlight, campus news, etc. A separate version of the newsletter is generated for faculty. There is some information that is faculty only. Some content that is not pertinent is removed.

Templates might need to skew a bit based on programs.

Create a shared folder with templates so we can see the emails they’ve sent in the past.

Cadence:

  • 9/1 - 6/30. Every two weeks, student and faculty newsletter.
  • 7/1 - 8/31 Once a month.

Suggest using wealth management as testing team.

3 annual alumni networking events

New graduate campaign.

Welcome message to each degree conferral group.

Run emails for giving day (typically by program). Send out 40 emails in 2 week period.

Additional campaigns (e.g. push to update emails and addresses).

Slate allows drip campaigns. Good for controlling traffic.

Technical Requirements

Purpose

Define the proposed technical approach to achieving the functional requirements.





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