The day a student becomes an alumnus, and the university keeps the connection.
Customer
Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University
Universities & alumni
Location
Netherlands
Published
2026
Graduation is the most emotional day in a student's relationship with their university — and the moment it's most likely to go cold. Across 10,000 graduates over multiple ceremony sessions, RSM turned photo delivery into a consented alumni pipeline: graduates get every photo, and the university captured a verified, opt-in personal contact at peak goodwill.
The moment the relationship goes cold
Graduation is the most emotional day in a student's relationship with their university. It is also the moment that relationship is most likely to go cold. Student email addresses expire. Personal contact details were never properly captured. The people a university most wants to stay close to — its future alumni and donors — walk out the door and become unreachable within months.
The graduation photos made it worse, not better. Hundreds of graduates, thousands of images, and no easy way for anyone to find their own. The photos sat unseen, and the one natural reason to stay in touch was lost with them.
Photos for the graduate, a consented contact for the university
Relivo turned that moment into a connection. Graduates upload a selfie and receive every photo they appear in from the ceremony. In the same flow, they confirm their personal email and choose to stay connected for future alumni events.
Everything is opt-in and GDPR-compliant, so the graduate gets what they want most, and the university captures a verified, consented personal contact at the exact moment goodwill is at its peak.
An alumni pipeline built from the inside out
Across 10,000 graduates spread over multiple ceremony sessions, 8,140 onboarded into the gallery and ran 7,560 selfie searches, of which 7,020 matched. Crucially, 74% of graduates added a personal email — 6,020 verified, consented alumni contacts captured on the day, not chased down years later.
The result is a clean alumni pipeline built from the inside out. Instead of starting alumni relationships cold years later, the university starts them on graduation day, with up-to-date details the graduate gave willingly in exchange for something they genuinely wanted.
The warmest data you will ever collect is the data someone gives you to get something they love. Graduation photos are exactly that.
"Our alumni relationships are everything, and they should start the day someone graduates, not years later when we are trying to track them down. Relivo let every graduate keep their photos and let us keep the connection, with their consent. For our alumni communication and our fundraising, that warm first contact is exactly what we were missing."
Results
10,000
graduates across multiple ceremony sessions
8,140
graduates onboarded into the gallery (81%)
74%
of graduates added a personal email — the alumni-capture rate
6,020
verified, consented alumni contacts captured