with AIESECENGAGEMENT

A guide to the Engagement with AIESEC phase of the AIESEC Experience.

‘Expanding our physical and virtual reach’ AIESEC 2015

INTRODUCTION

This is a short introductory guide that explains the Engagement with AIESEC phase of the AIESEC Experience.

Read on if you wish to know more about:

Why the phase was created

How we define the Ew@ phase

Which types of activities sit within the Ew@ phase

How to rapidly increase the number of young people that we engage

For more information on the some of the definitions in this guide please see the Definitions section at the end of the guide.

HISTORY

In 2010, we created our 2015 mid-term ambition. AIESECers from around the world expressed that we should be delivering more life changing AIESEC experiences to more young people.

Key barriers to providing more experiences:

‘The time it takes for a young person to part take in an AIESEC experience.’

‘Young people do not immediately understand the value of an AIESEC experience or why AIESEC exists as an organisation and the impact that we have on the world.’

Hence, the Engagement with AIESEC phase was born!

The aim of the phase was to drive activities that enable more young people to be introduced to and to interact with AIESEC. They interact with key elements of the AIESEC Way, such as Our Values and our Global Learning Environment.

ACHIEVING AIESEC 2015

By focusing on the root cause of our success (our growing physical and virtual reach) we will move closer to achieving our 2015 ambition.

The activities in the engagement with AIESEC phase are crucial to ensuring that we increase our physical and virtual reach and enable more young people to experience AIESEC.

Activities that we run in the Ew@ phase should enable AIESEC to become a more inclusive organisation.

’Our growing physical and virtual reach makes us the

most credible and diverse global youth voice’.

‘WHAT is Engagement?’

Engagement is about providing value to an individual through an activity that enables them to experience AIESEC. The engagement activity should be so effective that the young person either:

The phase presents opportunities to interact with AIESEC, without having joined or experienced one of AIESEC’s ELD programmes.

- wants to join an ELD programme

- wants to promote AIESEC to people that they know

PRINCIPLES of ENGAGEMENT with AIESEC

The engagement with AIESEC principles guide the activities that we run in this phase. Each activity should:

Align with the WHY, HOW & WHAT of AIESEC

Align with the AIESEC Values

Enable individuals to understand the value of AIESEC’s experiential leadership development platform

Provide value to the individual participating in the activities

Aim to create promotors or ELD customers for AIESEC

We define promoters and customers as the following:

A young person can be both a customer and a promoter. However, a promoter of AIESEC does not need to become an ELD participant.

ELD CustomersPromotersA person who recommends AIESEC A person taking an ELD programme

THE ENGAGEMENT FUNNEL

The Engagement Funnel shows the way that we can use the Ew@ phase and the activities that we can use to engage a young person. To see a video explaining the Engagement Funnel please see the Engagement with AIESEC wiki.

REACH

Micro Xp

Public Relations

Marketing

The top of the funnel represents people that people can currently be reached through engagement activities. Ultimately, we aim to use the Ew@ activities to attract a young person to the ELD programmes that we offer or to promote our brand and products to potential customers and demonstrate the impact that we are having in the world.

REACH - Represents the number of people that can interact with AIESEC through our current structures and channels. ENGAGEMENT- Is when we run activities to influence a person to promote AIESEC or become an ELD customer. CONVERSION RATE - The shape of the funnel represents the number of people that we convert to ELD. NOT everyone that we engage becomes an ELD customer but we aim to have a HIGH CONVERSION RATE.

ACTIVITIES

There are 3 types of activities in this phase of the AIESEC Xp.

MICRO EXPERIENCESActivities that create micro experiences for young people. These activities create a separate value proposition from our core ELD programmes. For example, short-term volunteering as part of an Associate membership programme.

PUBLIC RELATIONSPR activities increase our organisational reputation. These activities manage the flow of information between AIESEC and the general public. For example, AIESEC’s 40 under 40 Alumni publication.

MARKETING Marketing activities that drive sales in our core ELD programmes. These activities use the value propositions of our core programmes. For example, a blue man campaign run for TMP recruitment.

NOTE: All three activities are closely linked. For example, MICRO EXPERIENCES can be combined with MARKETING activities to create a high conversion rate of customers to ELD programmes.

‘WHO are we engaging?’ ACTIVITIES

We are looking to engage a primary group of young people (aged 18-24).

We would like as many young people who are engaged with AIESEC to have the chance to go on and take an ELD programme.

Your entity should segment it’s youth market and define key target audience groups for engagement.

Note: We do not exclusively aim to attract people in this age range - this is simply our target audience.

What do these activities look like in my LC?

MICRO EXPERIENCES PUBLIC RELATIONS MARKETINGShort-term volunteering Press releases Recruitment campaigns

Global village Publications Advertising

Youth to Business Annual reports Email marketing

Youth forums gorilla marketing

Developing leaders days Flash mobs

Youth councils ELD Programme info session

Needs-based volunteering

How can we MULTIPLY the effect of our Engagement Activities?

Working with existing networks of young people is one way that we can rapidly engage more people whilst running Engagement activities.

Two key strategies are based on working with:

YOUTH ALLIANCES VIRTUAL SPACES

We need to work with existing youth organisations to increase the number of people that take part in

engagement activities.

We need to find mutually beneficial youth alliances with other membership organisations.

We need to use online networks to tell people about AIESEC.

Virtual spaces are widely accessible and a growing method of communication for the current generation of young people. It is not enough to simply have random online interactions with

young people.

These virtual spaces need to be driven by the content that they provide to the user.

Did this guide answer your questions?

We hope so, but if not then for more information on the Engagement with AIESEC, please contact one of the AIESEC International team members below.

For any questions relating to the Ew@ phase or Micro experiences:

Steve SparrowVice President Product Development

steves@ai.aiesec.org

For more information related to Marketing activities:

Peter GallivanVice President Marketing

peterg@ai.aiesec.org

For more information related to Public relations activities:

Crisette ArcilliaAI Community Manager crisettea@ai.aiesec.org