Customer Success Stories
University’s emails to prospective students go from boring to branded
1.2 million
Prospective students to target
5x faster
Time to build emails
11.7% improvement
In prospective student satisfaction with emails
Company
SNHU (Southern New Hampshire University) is a private university whose rapidly expanding online program makes it one of the fastest-growing universities in the United States. It offers undergraduate, graduate, doctoral and certificate programs through its multiple colleges and schools. It received its university charter in 1963 and now has about 165,000 students.
Headquarters
New Hampshire, USA
Industry
Education
Size
5,000+
Integration
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Challenges
The university’s marketing automation system wasn’t working well for them. Because it took so much time to get things looking right and displaying properly across all email platforms, the university settled for generic, boring emails with no visuals. Emails lacked oomph and looked like they were coming from someone’s desktop. Because they didn’t have the resources to put more effort into building better emails, they accepted a lower standard than they would have liked. At the same time, they realized that being boring and off-brand was no way to recruit new students. The university was looking for a way to put its best foot forward.
Solution
Knak made email creation in Salesforce Marketing Cloud a whole lot easier, in particular thanks to the drag-and-drop user interface, the ability to get more people involved in email creation, and the ability to speed up the review process as emails are created.
Benefits
Democratization
Email creation is now so easy, all teams can be involved. Instead of emails being the domain of a few experts, the marketing and creative teams can work together to create them. Everyone can collaborate in real time. No more does one team feel like it’s stepping on another team’s toes.
Speed
The time needed to create emails has dropped by about 80%, from five hours down to about one. Gone is the old system where creative wrote a copy in a Word document and sent it to be turned into an email. Now, anyone can build the emails directly in Knak. The approvals process has also been speeded up.
Managers who want to check on the progress of a campaign no longer need to ask for a presentation. They can see emerging campaigns email in Knak and chime in without slowing down the team
Better-looking, more useful emails
Emails are now not only on-brand and more aesthetically pleasing, with icons and images, they are also easier to read. That makes them more useful. Previously, students would have had to read the whole email to understand the message the university was trying to get out. Now, they can tell in just two or three seconds what action they are being asked to take. For the university, that’s been a significant benefit.
Cross-device compatibility
Knak allows everyone involved in email creation to see what the final product looks like, no matter what email platform or device it is viewed on. Quality control is built right in; no more worrying about cross-device compatibility or funny-looking buttons.
Ease of training
New team members can be trained directly in Knak and don’t have to understand Salesforce Marketing Cloud.
Better landing pages
All the benefits of email creation are also evident in our landing pages. Instead of boring, they are now helpful, useful and easier to read.