In today’s hyper-connected world, higher education institutions face the challenge of meeting the evolving expectations of students while managing the complexities of diverse student support-facing stakeholder needs. The key to thriving in this landscape lies in creating a truly student-centric experience—one that is seamless, personalized, and engaging. Enter Salesforce’s powerful trifecta: Education Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Data Cloud. Together, these platforms can revolutionize how institutions deliver value, enabling them to evolve into experience-driven campuses while getting and maintaining a strategic grip on the use of institutional data.
The New Standard: Student Experience as the North Star
Students today expect more than just academic excellence; they seek meaningful, connected, and relevant experiences at every touchpoint—from admissions to alumni engagement. Institutions must deliver this in a way that feels intuitive and personalized. The Salesforce trifecta provides the tools to meet these demands while enabling campuses to operate more efficiently. Speaking from my own experience from my days at a community college upward through my undergrad time at Arizona State into my experience as a grad student, when I felt most supported by the University, is when I felt most unencumbered to focus on the academic work itself. While the trifecta did not exist back then, I still benefitted from advanced technologies that saved me time and provided me clarity on steps I needed to take to address the administrative burden. Today institutions have much more tools to take advantage of to streamline the experience.
Education Cloud: The Foundation of Holistic Engagement
Salesforce Education Cloud empowers institutions with a unified view of each student. By consolidating data from admissions, academics, advising, and beyond, it provides the foundation for creating meaningful connections. This platform doesn’t just streamline operations—it fosters relationships.
- Imagine the ability to drive the application process for the student by leveraging the data already on hand to lessen the burden on the applicant. By taking previously known preferences and applying them to future scenarios so that familiarity is at the forefront for the student. (I was ecstatic when I learned Marriott implemented Salesforce to know me better through CRM and offer me suggestions on what my preferences are when traveling and selecting hotel room types and amenities)
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Similarly, imagine having the ability to detect when a student is struggling academically and sending an automated notification to their advisor. Or notifying a student of an important missing document that might prevent them from registering them for school, while providing a detailed path forward to resolve the gap.
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Along the way toward graduation, consider the value of connecting students with alumni mentors aligned to their career aspirations—all within a single platform. Providing a robust community atmosphere that benefits the student and the alumni – proud to serve their ‘past selves’ on their journey toward an impactful career.
Marketing Cloud: Delivering Personalization at Scale
Once the foundation is set, Marketing Cloud takes engagement to the next level. With its powerful marketing automation tools, institutions can craft journeys that resonate with students, faculty, and alumni alike.
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Dynamic campaigns: Send tailored messages to prospective students based on their interests, driving higher conversion rates. Through the soft capture of preferences better personalize transactional and marketing messages that compel action and make students feel welcome and supported.
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Omni-channel communication: Engage students on their terms—whether through email, SMS, or social media—building trust and deepening connections. Individuals have their preferences of where, when and how to communicate, it may change over time… so be prepared for any pivot naturally and seamlessly.
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Retention strategies: Use predictive analytics to identify at-risk students and deploy personalized campaigns to offer help, guidance or re-engage them across personal and academic challenges. This area leverages SIS data all the way to student housing and meal plan information through data cloud and education cloud to stay in front of important actions that inform the student and their support team of necessary actions or challenges being faced. Lets support the WHOLE student not solely their ability to make payments and complete classes as they progress toward graduation.
Data Cloud: The Glue That Binds It All Together
Data Cloud amplifies the capabilities of Education and Marketing Clouds by turning raw data into actionable insights in real time. It creates a single source of truth that institutions can rely on to make smarter decisions. My favorite aspect of data cloud is that no disparate data system is out of reach to help create the most robust experience for the student. There are no missing ‘crayons’ to color the experiential story for the student.
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Real-time insights: Track campus engagement trends and pivot strategies in real time to address emerging needs. Bring faculty, campus support, student advising into a single data construct that prompts actions through education cloud, mobile or communities to reach staff and students where they are.
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360-degree student profiles: Enrich student profiles with behavioral and demographic data for unparalleled personalization. Why do we expect to be called by name with some companies and are shocked when they know our name elsewhere, lets make sure in a long-term investment in degrees that students are making, they feel understood, supported and at the very least known.
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Improved ROI: Use data-driven decisions to optimize resources and investments, ensuring every dollar is spent with maximum impact.
The Power of the Trifecta
When these three clouds work in harmony, the possibilities are transformative:
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Admissions teams can create hyper-personalized recruitment campaigns.
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Academic advisors can proactively address student challenges before they escalate.
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Faculty can engage in whole student conversations that are contextual while the build next generations of career-people and future thought leaders
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Alumni relations teams can foster lifelong relationships with targeted, meaningful outreach.
This trifecta positions institutions to not only meet but exceed the expectations of today’s students, turning them into advocates for life.
A Call to Action: Step Into the Future of Higher Education
The journey to becoming a student experience-driven campus starts with the decision to prioritize connection and innovation. I would be highly remiss to not mention the importance of sound people and process alignment as a predecessor to apply technology. Even the best technology can be hampered without doing this uber-important investment of right people, right process (right data) and then apply the technology. However, as this is well settled….Salesforce Education Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Data Cloud offer the roadmap to reimagining what’s possible.
Are you ready to transform your campus into a thriving hub of engagement, empowerment, and success? Let the Salesforce trifecta guide you into the future of higher education.
Curious to learn more? Start your journey with JourneyBlazers guiding your institution on the trifecta Salesforce cloud solutions today and see how we can help you reshape the way you serve students, staff, and alumni.
