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A Language Learning Company Transforms Sales and Marketing

Client Success Snapshot

Client Profile:

  • Overview: A language education provider
  • Industry: Education (ELS)
  • Team Size: 18,000
  • Annual Revenue: US$ 1 Billion
  • Headquarters: Princeton, New Jersey
  • Markets: Global

The Challenge

The company wanted to amp up and unify its business practices, customer service initiatives, and marketing strategies. In addition, it set out to categorize returning learners correctly, and eliminate unnecessary overlap. Lastly, it wanted to track all leads that came through its pipeline from around the world to better support marketing and sales teams.


Gerent's Approach

Gerent implemented Marketing Cloud and activated several Salesforce modules to empower the business to meet its goals. Journey Builder was used to create and execute a standardized communication strategy; Mobile Studio was used to reach students on any device with personalized messaging. To add, Automation Studio enabled Gerent to execute multi-step marketing and data management activities on an immediate, triggered or scheduled basis. To enable the company to track interactions with prospects, Gerent created personalized web pages and microsites.


Key Outcomes

Post-implementation, the company discovered a large number of previously hidden leads in its data, which it was able to act on. Once it did, the company closed the gap on its Q4 revenue goals. The language learning provider was also able to deploy data-driven client interactions through micro-targeted campaigns, apply different communication strategies based on industry or region, and streamline its communications and marketing reporting.


Client Success Story

Businesses that have embarked on successful digital transformations to better serve their customers often agree on two things: it was a tough process and at the end of the day, it was the correct path to take. While the process can be long and arduous, companies realize why they do it: to eliminate information silos, streamline customer data flow throughout the organization, and provide the means to better serve customers.

Tear Down and Rebuild

A global leader in language instruction and leadership training made the decision to undergo a complete digital transformation. The company referred to the transformation as its 2.0 project — it would rebuild from the ground up. The company’s long history coupled with its global span made its transformation project a mammoth endeavor; over the years, the business expanded its language training services to countries around the world. 

Gerent was chosen as the company’s preferred Salesforce implementation partner, and Sean Best was the program manager. 

“Even though the company’s brand was global, the educator was very regional. And the regions operated almost as independent entities for many years,”  he explained.

One of the client’s objectives was to unify its business practices and eliminate duplication and overlap. The educator also wanted to track all the leads that came through its pipeline from around the world. Unfortunately, it had no way of reaching these goals with its existing patchwork setup.


A New Kind of Customer

For decades, the firm’s language centers enrolled clients through walk-in traffic or phone calls from prospective learners. Although today, people and businesses are used to cloud-based language learning they can access from mobile devices. Cloud-based learners can receive instruction anywhere, any time — two hallmarks of the digital age.

Digitalizing the company’s back-end operations required a custom design to support the client’s front end: marketing and sales; this was where many issues lay:

  • Different marketing strategies from region to region and country to country in the same region
  • No dedicated, in-house marketing materials
  • Poor levels of coordination between marketing and sales
  • No streamlined process to handle student complaints globally
  • No means of tracking leads

Language courses were offered in various levels of difficulty; once a level was complete, a learner would need to re-enroll for the next level. The company’s re-enrolment rate was no better than 60% and it couldn’t identify why many students didn’t renew.

Further, when learners completed a level, they became alumni. Alumnae who re-enrolled after a year were considered new students— which skewed sales and marketing strategies. Salesforce Marketing Cloud was the obvious choice for the language educator and Gerent completed its successful implementation in October 2018.


The Results

Marketing Cloud opened the company’s eyes to what it had been missing. Sean believes the educator discovered a large number of previously hidden leads in its data, which it was then able to act on. As a result, the company closed the gap on its Q4 revenue goals. More specifically, the company was able to:

  • Capture all student interactions as data that could be analyzed 
  • Use data to deploy micro-targeted campaigns
  • Apply different communication strategies based on industry and region
  • Develop common KPIs across all regions
  • Streamline marketing reporting

When Gerent implemented Marketing Cloud, the following modules were activated:

  • Journey Builder: to create and automatically execute a communication strategy
  • Mobile Studio: to reach students on any device with personalized messaging
  • Automation Studio: to execute multi-step marketing and data management activities on an immediate, triggered or scheduled basis
  • Web Studio: to create personalized web pages and microsites, and track student interactions

Following its successful Marketing Cloud implementation, the company was better positioned to gather, analyze, and act upon customer data from all its language centers around the world. After Gerent streamlined the client’s back-end operations, its 2.0 project proved to be a tremendous success.

Contact Gerent today to find out how we can help your business achieve its ideal future state!

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