BAU, marketing automation and process optimisation

BAU, Centro Universitario de Diseño Barcelona

Based in Poblenou 22@ in Barcelona, BAU is attached to the Central University of Catalonia (UVic-UCC) and has been running higher education design courses since 1989. It’s a trailblazer in teaching undergraduate programmes in Design and Art as part of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). It’s also cemented its postgraduate options with the 4th edition of the Master’s Degree in Research and Experimentation in Design and introduced the BAU/UVic-UCC PhD Programme in Design and Communication.

BAU’s range of courses added to its domestic and international standing in the education industry makes it the school of choice for a large number of students. As a result it was getting lots of requests for information and contacts but was unable to provide a personalised response and take advantage of them.

Seeking sales-qualified leads

BAU is a world-class educational facility and a leader in design which is why so many young people are keen to study there. The leads were coming in, but as the saying goes, they couldn’t see the wood for the trees and had no system in place to classify these leads properly and work on them. Here are the stages we went through to turn leads into sales-qualified leads (SQL):

  • Inspiration stage. Analysis of the channels and workshops to identify the buyer persona for each BAU product and the buyer journey which takes them from simple lead to SQL.

  • Ideation stage. Specification of SQL for each product, workflows and content offers for each one.

  • Implementing the basic workflows. Based on the definition of the workflows, we pinpointed the touchpoints and the information and messages likely to be of interest to the leads at any given time while also crafting a conversion path and a conceptualisation of offers per campaign.

Automation additionally made it possible to start generating a scoring system, a classification of leads anchored in socio-demographic parameters and the level of engagement with the platform and the content. This enabled us to simplify processes and target and use resources much more efficiently for the leads with the greatest potential, the sales-qualified leads, and in turn furnish people interested in BAU with personalised information and content at each stage of the process.

Rolling out marketing automation

The core of this project was implementing HubSpot’s CRM. This involved importing the database, migrating all the information and integrating BAU’s website and landing pages. What we were looking for in this step was to centralise all the data in the same place so we could analyse them and get a single vision which would help in strategic decision-making.

By using this tool, BAU was able to start tapping into the information gathered to redefine workflows in line with its needs. Once again this made it possible to streamline processes through automation coupled with the option to personalise the content which impacts users as much as possible.

Tangible results

The project lasted three months with one month of research, a second spent on implementing the CRM and a third on setting up the workflows. We achieved outstanding results in the first 10 months after we kicked off the strategy:

  • Firstly, we unlocked a qualitative improvement in service and support for potential BAU students due to SQL scoring and the personalisation of content and workflows.

  • Secondly, this led to a considerable and sustained increase in requests for information, meetings arranged, registrations and enrolments compared to 2021.

Do you want to optimize the processes of your organization and bet on marketing automation?

We can accompany you and guide you on this path that is so decisive for a company.

Tell us about your needs and let's get going! Contact us!

Agile Digital Intelligence