How USC Marshall cuts email production time in Pardot by using RGE Studio

Intro

USC Marshall School of Business is a top-tier business school at the University of Southern California. It offers multiple degree programs, including full-time and part-time MBAs, PhDs, MS, BSBAs, and more. With an alumni network of over 90,000 and 4,000 enrolled students per year, the USC Marshall communications team stays active year-round.

Challenge

Dwayne Rice joined USC Marshall in April of 2020 as the Senior Associate Director of CRM Management and Digital Marketing. As part of his responsibilities, Dwayne supports 11 graduate programs with email marketing for prospective students. Among the core strategies for engaging potential students and capturing leads into the CRM system are email drip campaigns.

As a result of the number of departments and the scope of the campaigns, Dwayne needed an “efficient process to crank out emails”. There was only one problem - USC Marshall was already using Pardot for email automation: a powerful automation that integrates with Salesforce, but lacks an intuitive drag and drop design tool.

This left Dwayne with a dilemma. Creating emails in Pardot was both time-consuming and did not produce the desired results in terms of email design.

Prepared to do his job well, Dwayne searched for an easy-to-use email design tool that would generate a custom HTML without requiring coding skills. His goal was simple: create professional emails, quickly.

When testing solutions, Dwayne had a number of considerations. At the top of the list was the question, “How quickly can I build a successful email with this tool?”

"The only steps for inputting an RGE Studio email into Pardot are copy HTML and paste HTML. It’s an easy process."
Dwayne Rice, Senior Associate Director of CRM, Management and Digital Marketing

Solution

Dwayne came across RGE Studio (formerly known as Beefree) and knew it was the right tool for the job. He purchased the Freelancer plan himself to hit the ground running in his new role, then later officially brought the tool into USC Marshall.

RGE Studio is sophisticated enough to meet Dwayne’s technical requirements (namely, HTML and CSS outputs compatible with Pardot), but simple enough to save him time when designing email campaigns.

RGE Studio also allows him to organize projects for the 11 programs he supports, send test emails to stakeholders for design approval and save reusable elements such as headers and footers for a faster design process.

"RGE Studio enabled us to create content efficiently enough to bring multiple processes in-house and discontinue relationships with several third-party vendors, saving time and money for our programs."
Dwayne Rice, Senior Associate Director of CRM, Management and Digital Marketing