The Indiana University Alumni Association is dedicated to supporting IU students through the promotion of State of Indiana IU license plates. Each plate sold generates scholarship funds IU students.

When I first joined the IUAA staff, our primary method of promotion was direct mail. Each year, Indiana alumni received postcards reminding them about the IU license plate. While we believed this approach was effective, we had no concrete data to confirm it.

As we transitioned to digital advertising, there was a lot of uncertainty. The change from print to digital was challenging, and we were concerned about losing effectiveness. However, we soon discovered that this shift had no measurable impact on plate sales, which suggested that our previous promotions might not have been as effective as we thought.

After further investigation, we found that the BMV uses a schedule to promote plates based on last names. By targeting alumni in Indiana who were due for a renewal notice the following month, we saw a noticeable increase in sales. The only times we experienced a dip in sales were when there were issues with our digital advertising platform, reinforcing that our new promotional strategy was indeed successful. The updated strategy brings in more than $1.6 million in scholarship dollars annually, and the IU plate is now the number one selling specialty plate in the State of Indiana.