How Minnesota State Mankato streamlined email for 40+ departments using Pardot

Minnesota State University, Mankato has consistently ranked among the top colleges in the State of Minnesota. Since its founding in 1868, the university has expanded to offer over 130 undergraduate and more than 80 graduate programs.

There was just one issue: its email process was stuck in the past. Their CRM was old and fickle, resulting in days of hand-coding and testing, even for the simplest emails. 

Kyle Snay, the university’s CRM Administrator, was on a mission to streamline communication and empower more staff to create on-brand emails. Kyle started searching for a tool that was powerful and easy to use.

That’s when he discovered RGE Studio (formerly Beefree).

The old way: Drowning in HTML

Before RGE Studio, Minnesota State Mankato’s email workflow was a patchwork of disconnected tools, and it showed.

Each of the university’s 40+ departments and programs was using its own system to design and send emails. This siloed setup resulted in fragmented communication and made brand consistency nearly impossible.

“It was tough to regulate branding. Everyone was doing their own thing. And we were living in HTML.”

Departments sent over content, which then had to be hand-coded in Dreamweaver, tested, and reworked endlessly to (hopefully) render correctly in their CRM. There was no image hosting, limited personalization, and features like responsive design or buttons were out of reach. 

The lack of centralized control wasn’t just a branding issue; it also raised security and privacy concerns regarding student data. And with overlapping tools doing similar jobs, the costs quickly added up.

Getting a basic email out the door took days of manual effort. The outdated system just wasn’t cutting it anymore.

How RGE Studio sparked a transformation

When Minnesota State, Mankato, first adopted RGE Studio in 2021, the goal was straightforward: to replace outdated email design tools that posed security risks due to the storage of sensitive student data.

“As we got deeper into using RGE Studio, we realized its capabilities went far beyond what we originally expected.”

What began as a quick fix evolved into a powerful tool for streamlining workflows, improving collaboration, and unlocking new use cases. RGE Studio quickly became the go-to email design platform for the entire university. Within 1-3 months, Mankato was able to see a return on their investment.

Beyond the fix: Migrating from Oracle to Pardot with RGE Studio 

Influenced by rising licensing costs, Makato made the switch from Oracle to Salesforce. Snay admits that while the team initially assumed Pardot’s native email builder might replace RGE Studio, it didn’t take long to realize there was simply no comparison.

“We quickly realized that [compared to Pardot] RGE Studio was a much more powerful tool. It wasn’t just easier to use, we had more options. Merge tags that previously only existed in Oracle could be added directly in RGE Studio.”

For Snay, this was a game-changer. As a CRM Administrator, he no longer had to worry about missing merge tags, which significantly shortened his implementation time.

Even better? There's no need to train every user in the CRM. “We’re saving money by keeping users in RGE Studio instead of moving them into Pardot and paying for extra user accounts, which can get expensive,” Kyle explained.

Now, when a department needs to send an email, here is what the flow looks like:

• They build it directly in RGE Studio using on-brand, customizable templates. 
• Once it’s ready, they notify Kyle and the CRM team
• The CRM team then imports it into Salesforce Account Engagement Pardot within 10 seconds.