volunteer opportunities and highlight the benefits of giving back to U of T Engineering. The campaign included: –– A dedicated web page outlining volunteer opportunities; –– A five-part news series on alumni volunteers to mark National Volunteer Month (April 2016); –– A feature on seven engaged alumni volunteers; and –– An ad in Skulematters magazine.
Other key communications initiatives included: –– Redesigning our quarterly alumni e-newsletter, beginning with the fall 2015 issue. This resulted in a 37.3 per cent open rate, 15 percentage points higher than the industry benchmark, leading to an additional 1,100 alumni readers per issue over 2014–2015. The newsletter also achieved a 13.6 per cent click-through rate, 11 percentage points higher than the industry benchmark. –– Highlighting the accomplishments of engineering women in our community through our alumni magazine Skulematters. This issue demonstrates the myriad ways diversity enriches the engineering profession, drives
innovation and enhances the student experience.
Alumni engagement with our website and social media channels (Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn) increased across the board in 2015–2016 as we focused on creating relevant content. Highlights include: –– A total of 78 news stories were published and/or repurposed from the Faculty news website, 20 more than the year before, marking a 34 per cent increase in published content. –– Overall pageviews for the alumni website (alumni. engineering.utoronto.ca) increased by 24 per cent to 68,834 from 55,392 the previous year. –– Traffic to the alumni website from links shared on Facebook increased by 27 per cent (1,411 in 2014–2015 vs. 1,791 in 2015–2016). –– Traffic driven to the alumni site from links shared on Twitter increased by 48 per cent (215 in 2014–2015 vs. 318 in 2015–2016). –– Traffic to the alumni site from links shared on LinkedIn increased by 51 per cent (174 in 2014–2015 vs. 263 in 2015–2016).
Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering | Annual Report 2016 | Chapter 7: Advancement 95