Pardot for Educational Institutes Case Study

  • December 20, 2022
  • Girikon
Background

The client partnered with Girikon due to their expertise in implementing Salesforce-based solutions, especially in the Salesforce for the education industry. The client wanted to replace HubSpot with Salesforce Pardot to create their forms, email templates, landing pages, and their digital transformation journeys. Girikon’s extensive experience in implementing Salesforce for various educational institutes convinced the client to hire their services and kick off the implementation process.

Girikon conducted several discovery sessions which included implementing Pardot and preparing for the rollout of the Salesforce solution to other faculties and departments. After the discovery session, Girikon gathered all the necessary requirements such as the challenges faced by students, their wishes, and the opportunity to improve while presenting their journey to the client. The client was convinced that Pardot could be used to capture not just the first step of the overall student journey but also interact with prospective students during the application and onboarding process.

Girikon worked with the IT department of the client to develop a robust digital enablement strategy for implementing an end-to-end solution for their student’s journey right from enquiry, application, and admission to offer, enrollment, onboarding, and support across the student lifecycle and beyond.

About the client

The client is a reputed Higher education institute offering courses in Biblical studies, quality education, and training. Though the client is committed to the Baptist heritage, they accept students from different religious denominations. The institute offers training in Bible, Theology, Evangelism, Education, Chaplaincy, Leadership development, and more. The object of the institute is to prepare students to apply their learnings in their respective professions such as teaching, nursing, accountancy, and more.

The client is at present undertaking a digital transformation project and is looking for an efficient way of undertaking things. Some of their key activities include reviewing existing business processes, reviewing their current digital ecosystem, and adopting a new platform such as Salesforce. Such an adoption can provide the client with a comprehensive view of students through their journey while introducing key automation and interoperability among their third-party systems

The Problem

Some of the challenges faced by the client’s team included the following:

  • Managing of current enquiry process using HubSpot, Jotform, and Paradigm (Student Management System). The team found it difficult to sync their probable data with Salesforce with the current process and multiple platforms.
  • Lack of a comprehensive view of their Sales, Marketing, and Student Journey.
  • The marketing team indulged in too much of manual tasks.
  • Absence of appropriate analytical reporting and tracking of prospect activity in the prior setup.
  • Failure to track Prospect activities on the institute’s website.
  • Creating custom forms, email templates, and automation processes in the prior setup involved complex processes.

Besides these pain points, the client also required the following:

  • The client needed an integrated solution within the Salesforce eco-system that could help them develop a long-term scalable solution.
  • The client desired to streamline the current process of syncing back an opportunity or a lead to Pardot to re-nurture a Prospect through the Sales Process.
  • The client wanted to simplify the Prospect Scoring process to help them focus on significant Leads.
The solution

Girikon partnered with the client for Salesforce implementation. This helped them alleviate their pain points while improving their efficiency. The Pardot implementation turned out to be a game-changer and helped the client in the tasks mentioned below:

  • Enquiry Management
  • Nurturing of prospects
  • Improving Communication including newsletters, events
  • Detailed tracking of prospects
  • Migrating HubSpot features to Pardot

Pardot Implementation: 

  • Setting up a Domain for implementing Pardot for the client.
  • Setting up Faculty based Marketing Campaigns.
  • Setting up two different Landing Pages: ‘Introducing the Christian teacher’ and ‘Get equipped for a rewarding career in teaching’.
  • Creating 4 different Pardot Forms: Prospects Capture, Event Registration, Prospectus Download, and General Enquiries Forms
  • Developing Custom Email templates
  • Auto-Syncing Prospect records from Pardot to Salesforce as Leads
  • Using Engagement Studio for automation and sending emails as reminders in set time intervals: 3 days, 5 days, or 10 days after filling in the Pardot Forms
  • Creating a Segmentation List and Segmentation Rules for segregating the List of Prospects based on Regions, Campuses and Faculties.
  • Tracking Activities of prospects from the client’s website by implementing Web Tracking URL
  • Migrating Data from Jotform, HubSpot, and Mailchimp to Pardot
The Outcome

Girikon’s implementation of Pardot to match the client’s business was successful. Now all the client’s business units are kept in Salesforce, which now acts as a single source of truth. The client benefitted from the implementation of Web Tracking URL for landing pages and Pardot forms as they are now able to capture and track prospect activities. The Engagement studio tool helped the client automate the frequent email reminders based on their custom logic. The Prospect Scoring empowered them to prioritize their Prospects and nurture them. Consequently, the client witnessed substantial growth in student enrolments.

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