alumni_lookup

Communications for the Champion Portal — Personalization and Segmentation

Purpose

Translate “targeted, hospitable communication” into portal rules that prevent broadcast-y experiences and increase relevance.

When to use

• Designing notifications (in-app/email/SMS) and preference controls
• Building community prompts, news items, and action packs
• Creating onboarding variations by lifestage, college, role, or affinity
• Preventing repetitive content when users join multiple communities

Core principles

• The more targeted, the better.
• Messaging should feel like conversation and hospitality, not mass broadcast.
• Segmentation improves relevance and reduces fatigue.

Primary segmentation dimensions (portal-relevant)

Use what the portal already knows, in this order: 1) Role context (Champion role selected/active) 2) Community context (affinity/college/region membership) 3) Lifestage context (Almost Alumni / Young Alumni / All Alumni / Champions) 4) Engagement signals (Observe/Engage/Contribute/Lead behaviors)

Relevance rules (implementation-friendly)

• Prefer “right message to fewer people” over “same message to everyone.”
• Cap frequency: reduce notification load when a user joins many communities.
• Avoid duplication: do not show identical prompts across multiple communities.
• Rotate content packs: use multiple prompt variants per category and cycle them.

Practical portal implications

• Add (or use) a simple “Messaging Preferences” model:
  • channels (in-app/email/SMS if applicable)
  • frequency (low/medium/high)
  • topic toggles (events, stories, mentoring, giving)
• Community prompts should be:
  • templated with community-specific tokens (name, type)
  • drawn from variant pools (rotating packs)
  • optionally grouped by community category to diversify prompts

Guardrails

Avoid:

• blasting the same welcome or prompt into every community a user joins
• defaulting to “everyone gets everything”
• copy that feels automated or generic

Prefer:

• small, relevant, timed nudges tied to real opportunities (event, intro, story, thanks)

Related docs

• /docs/source/COMMUNICATIONS__INVITATIONS_AND_CTAS.md
• /docs/source/FOUNDATIONS__ENGAGEMENT_ECOSYSTEM_MODEL.md
• /docs/source/FOUNDATIONS__HOPE_BEYOND_THE_TOWER_LIFESTAGE_RHYTHM.md