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Leo Pignon
Chief Digital Officer, IHM Business School
IHM Business School, an independent private institution, owned by the non-profit foundation - Institute for Higher Marketing (IHM). With campuses in Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö in Sweden, IHM offers advanced business programs in marketing, leadership, sales, communication, finance, and economics. IHM encourages entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs to surround themselves with like-minded individuals who motivate and help them refine incisive new ideas. IHM equips students and stakeholders with relevant, modern knowledge, enabling them to be more independent and accountable for their contributions to the business and community. It offers subjects as diverse as strategic marketing and corporate development as part of vocational training and executive education.
Supernova Award Category:
The Problem:
To meet the needs of the modern business world, IHM Business School sought to create an insights-led organization with a unified student engagement platform that would enable dynamic learning.
To create a world-class platform that would enhance student experience, employee engagement, and sales pipeline with greater digitalization, collaboration, and automation, IHM set out to address the following challenges:
● Replace its existing disparate systems and data sets with a single platform to improve visibility and agility across the learning lifecycle and provide a modern learning experience
● Establish a centralized platform and deliver a consistent 360-degree experience for every learner
● Implement a self-service student community that would be key to simplifying support and reducing reliance on phone conversations
● Integrate a personalized experience for students, leading to improved engagement and experience, which, in turn, would aid cross-selling and upselling of new courses
● Transition from a legacy IT landscape to a digital-first, cloud-first integrated environment
The Solution:
Forming a cross-functional team with IHM Marketing and IHM Digital Management, Infosys worked for 11 months to develop a roadmap to implement this strategic program. The execution of this program was supported by Infosys SMEs from the Salesforce Partner Advisory Board, facilitating continuous engagement with the Salesforce industry and architecture teams to deliver a best-in-class solution on the Salesforce platform. A key initiative was to enhance IHM’s marketing operations and transform IHM's marketing technology stack by implementing new technologies, which included :
• Salesforce marketing automation tools for advertising and personalization
• Automated audience creation in Marketing Cloud with social media channel sync via Advertising Studio
• Always-on marketing automation with a well-defined campaign audience strategy
• Advanced email and website personalization
The Results:
The teamwork between IHM and Infosys has yielded tangible and measurable results that include:
• A remarkable 130% increase in website traffic
• Expansion of the marketable audience by almost 400% and generation of 20,000 leads in the CRM system
• Significant time and cost savings for the marketing team through reduced manual work
• Improved agility and efficiency, resulting in significant time savings by eliminating manual audience imports to Facebook
• Elimination of data and communication silos between teams, leading to enhanced efficiency and reduced costs of acquiring new students
• Increased sales per salesperson by leveraging relevant data in Salesforce Marketing Cloud based on student interests and needs
• Enhanced mobile support for anywhere, anytime access
• A single view of information over a unified, interactive platform
Metrics:
• Activating the current CRM, including social channels
• Implementing Salesforce Sales Cloud for recruitments and admissions and Service Cloud for service and support, creating One IHM – a unified CRM system connecting internal and external stakeholders
• Managing user consent and preferences while tracking and aggregating new student data to enrich profiles with information like engagement score or favorite subjects and topics
• Acting on student web behavior and site interactions, orchestrating the student journey across email, web, and social channels
• Implementing web and open-time email personalization, surveys, abandoned cart management, and student journeys, as well as reporting and dashboards
• Building a self-service student community using Experience Cloud and seamlessly integrating the event management and learning management systems (LMS) to streamline processes
• Enabling an enhanced recruitment experience by leveraging Marketing Cloud journeys and implementing highly personalized targeting and content through Salesforce Marketing Cloud Personalization (previously Interaction Studio)
• Implementing IHM Business Network powered by Salesforce Experience Cloud, enabling improved collaboration, and fostering closer relationships between teachers and the school while providing IHM with a comprehensive view
• Leveraging our CoE and training advisory as an accredited and authorized Salesforce training partner for the enablement of super users
The Technology:
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement
Salesforce Sales Cloud
Salesforce Service Cloud
Experience Cloud
Disruptive Factor:
During implementation, we faced challenges integrating disparate systems and creating a unified platform to improve visibility and agility in the learning lifecycle. Our project is game-changing because it transformed IHM Business School's digital experience, streamlining and automating processes to support the student journey. By centralizing data and implementing a self-service portal, we challenged the status quo, reducing reliance on phone support and enhancing student engagement. This project disrupted internal and external operations, resulting in significant increases in website traffic, marketable audience, and lead generation.
The personalized marketing approach led to a dramatic increase in engagement and lead generation. The integration of Salesforce solutions transformed IHM Business School's operations, resulting in a seamless digital experience for students and faculty. The self-service portal significantly reduced support requests and improved user satisfaction. This project fundamentally shifted IHM's approach to student interaction, making it a pioneering example in the educational sector.
IHM needed to replace its disparate systems with a single platform to enhance the learning experience, establish a centralized system for a consistent 360-degree learner experience, and implement a self-service student community to simplify support. We managed the project, provided CxO advisory, and delivered end-to-end implementation, including training staff for self-sufficiency and augmenting their internal teams.
The collaboration with IHM led to a 130% increase in website traffic, a 400% expansion in the marketable audience, and the generation of 20,000 leads. The marketing team saved significant time and costs through reduced manual work, and the elimination of data silos enhanced efficiency and reduced acquisition costs. Sales per salesperson increased due to relevant data insights, and the unified platform improved mobile access and overall information integration.
Solution Highlights
We formed a cross-functional team to develop and implement a strategic roadmap over 11 months. The solution included Salesforce Sales Cloud for recruitment, Service Cloud for support, and various other Salesforce applications to manage the student journey and engagement. We also built a self-service student community, integrated event and learning management systems, and enabled a personalized recruitment experience through Salesforce Marketing Cloud Personalization. The IHM Business Network powered by Salesforce Experience Cloud improved collaboration and provided a comprehensive view of students and teachers.
Shining Moment:
Leo (CDO) and Linda (CMO) are proud of the work that the small team at IHM has done to get tremendous results out of their digital marketing investment. It is an extraordinary statement to the quality of the team they have.
A real shining moment was seeing the results of their personalised campaigns and how much it improved their lead generation, increased their audience and website traffic.
About IHM Business School
IHM Business School (Sweden), owned by the non-profit IHM Institute, equips professionals with advanced programs in marketing, leadership, & more across Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö campuses. IHM fosters an environment for entrepreneurs & intrapreneurs to develop sharp ideas & empowers graduates with modern knowledge for business & community success.
