Business Context
For universities, it is critical to have a 360-degree view of students’ journeys, and personalize them to improve enrollment, engagement and retention across the entire student lifecycle. Optimizing individual experience with real-time data ensures relevance at every moment.
The Client
Our client is one of the largest private nonprofit universities in the US and ranked in the Top 20 of accredited colleges and universities offering online programs. With more than 150 academic and career-relevant programs, its mission is to deliver meaningful learning and accessible world-class student experiences through quality programs and services.
The Situation
Following a major merger with another leading university, our client looked to implement innovative solutions to support its growing student base and automate services to meet surging demands. They needed a modern platform that would provide a 360-degree view of students’ journeys, with personalization, engagement, and retention as the key tenets.
This required migration from legacy systems to a marketing cloud to achieve effective data consolidation, targeted communication, and a simplified application process, while adhering to regulatory compliance.
Mastek was chosen as the transformation partner given our expertise in the higher education domain, and proven track record in cloud technology solutions. Based on our experience, we recommended the Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) platform to accelerate data-driven actions and personalized content for smarter campaigns across the entire student journey lifecycle.
The Solution
With its successful experience in SFMC implementations, Mastek approached the migration process through integration of multiple data sources – legacy CRM systems, lead management and qualification systems, student information systems, website forms, details from HR systems and more.
Apps were integrated either through API or file drop automation through SFTP protocol for efficient communication and marketing campaign execution. MuleSoft was deployed as the middleware layer to provide a re-usable API approach and a modern data architecture to bridge the universities together.
Journey Builder was leveraged to develop automated journeys to guide leads in the enrollment process and optimized to ensure appropriate categorization of enquiries and efficient tracking from initial contact to enrollment.
This included:
- Digital advertising, social media and email campaigns, subscription forms, and organic searches to attract and engage prospective students.
- Updating students on program details, testimonials, application instructions, and career opportunities through emails and SMS
- Guiding applicants through the enrollment process.
- Developing campaigns to strengthen relationship with businesses for employee training and upskilling initiatives.
Deploying a 4-step process of Discover, Design, Develop, and Support — and an agile methodology — we achieved continuous collaboration and improvement. We used a sandbox environment to ensure robust testing, while safeguarding the integrity of live service. We deployed the SFMC Package Manager to migrate components to the live production environment after thorough validation.
The Results
Mastek’s solution outperformed across all key performance indicators (KPIs) that the university wished to achieve, including:
- The number of prospective students who reach out for more information.
- The number of leads that successfully complete the application process.
- Conversion of applicants to enrolled students.
| Email open rate | Email click-through rate | Bounce rate | Unsubscribe rate |
|---|---|---|---|
|
37% |
12.5% |
<3% |
0.18% |
It was a seamless and successful migration to, and onboarding of SFMC, with innovative automation significantly improving efficiencies. We achieved a 5-on-5 customer satisfaction rating. Additionally, we have co-created a future plan to scale even higher peaks.