The One Shift That Drove 16.6% Enrollment Growth at CSU

MS 25 | Case Study - Columbia Southern University (CSU)

Columbia Southern University’s admissions teams had ambitions to evolve their approach to better align with the expectations of today’s digital-first students. Manual processes and disconnected tools made it challenging for advisors to manage communications efficiently and respond to prospective students with speed and personalization.

That’s when CSU brought in Mole Street to evolve their admissions process, shifting from manual workflows to a unified, performance-driven platform built for scale.

The Challenge

Manual Workflows That Capped Performance and Visibility

Before partnering with Mole Street, CSU relied on a homegrown SIS/CRM to manage all admissions activity. While effective in its original purpose, the legacy approach offered limited automation and segmentation. This prompted the team to explore new ways to support a more dynamic, digital-first enrollment journey.

Manual Outreach With Low Engagement

Advisors spent considerable time managing one-to-one texts and emails, handling unclaimed leads manually. Outreach was often delayed and lacked personalization, making it difficult to capture student interest. This resulted in an average response rate of just 10%.

As a consequence, this manual process:

Delayed response times: Slowed follow-up on new inquiries
Created workflow inefficiencies: Added friction to daily operations
Lacked personalization: Offered no pre-call engagement or tailored messaging

Lack of Segmentation Made Targeting Challenging

Leads came in through digital ads, outreach events and website forms but were funneled into a one-size-fits-all engagement flow. There was no segmentation based on intent, source, or stage, resulting in uniform outreach regardless of lead context.

As a result:

Outreach was less targeted: All leads received the same messaging, regardless of intent or source.
Prioritization was limited: Advisors had no clear way to distinguish and focus on high-intent leads.
Personalization was challenging: Follow-up couldn’t be tailored based on lead behavior, which impacted conversion potential.

Disconnected Systems Created Operational Gaps

CSU’s admissions team operated across multiple systems that didn’t communicate with each other:

Internal CRM (Omega): Managed lead records but offered no automation
RingCentral: Used separately for calls and manual SMS
HubSpot: Underutilized—served only as a passive data mirror

Operating in separate systems made it difficult to maintain full visibility into the student journey.

As a result:

Key stages like lead qualification and application progress weren’t tracked in one place
Advisors lacked context for outreach or handoffs
Engagement was fragmented, with no unified system to manage the full funnel

Manual Reporting With Limited Insight

All reporting was compiled manually, offering only basic visibility into top-line KPIs. Attribution data was limited, making it harder to pinpoint which campaigns or reps were driving results.

This made it difficult to:

Track performance: Limited ability to measure advisor effectiveness
Pinpoint drop-off: No clear view of where leads exited the funnel
Optimize strategy: Difficulty determining which campaigns or content were driving inquiries

Staff Strain and Scalability Issues

Outreach and follow-ups were done manually. Consequently, maintaining daily operations required significant advisor time for repetitive tasks, limiting bandwidth for strategic work. This left minimal capacity for strategic initiatives or growth. The technology wasn’t lifting the workload; it was adding to it.

High operational load: Advisors spent significant time on repetitive administrative tasks
Inefficient scalability: Growth depended on additional effort—not smarter systems
Limited strategic capacity: Teams lacked the bandwidth to focus on high-impact initiatives

Attribution Blind Spots Limited Strategic Decisions

CSU saw an opportunity to improve attribution and better understand which channels were driving results. Without a centralized, trackable view of campaign performance, the admissions team was forced to rely on anecdotal insights or broad KPIs—undermining their ability to optimize efforts in real time.

This made it difficult to:

Identify top-performing campaigns or channels
Justify marketing spend and adjust in real time
Focus outreach on the most promising lead sources

The Business Impact of a Disconnected Admissions Infrastructure

Advisor productivity was constrained: Manual outreach workflows limited efficiency, with reps averaging just 63 calls per day prior to implementation.
Engagement opportunities were missed: Uniform outreach led to generic messaging and a connection rate of just 10%.
Limited behavioral insight: Advisors lacked visibility into which pages prospects viewed or interacted with—making personalization and pre-call context more difficult.
Time-intensive messaging: Follow-up emails and texts were sent manually after each call, often requiring reps to select templates one by one.
Fragmented tools and tracking: Key stages like lead qualification and application progress weren’t tracked in a single system, leading to inconsistent handoffs.
Minimal reporting and attribution visibility: Without unified reporting, it was challenging to measure campaign impact or identify what was driving results.
High effort, low efficiency: Manual processes stretched advisor capacity, requiring extra effort to keep pace with enrollment goals.
Limited agility in operations: Without flexible automation or segmentation, it was difficult to quickly adjust campaigns or re-engage prospective students.

The Goal - Automate Outreach, Unify Data and Improve Speed-to-Lead

The overarching goal was to modernize and streamline CSU’s admissions operations by shifting from a manual, fragmented process to a more agile, scalable system. To achieve this, the primary objective was to transition CSU’s existing SIS/CRM (Omega) workflows into HubSpot without disrupting daily operations.

This meant building the infrastructure to:

Increase advisor productivity
Free up reps from repetitive administrative tasks so they could spend more time engaging students and less time clicking through manual workflows.
Improve speed-to-lead
Accelerate the time between inquiry and first contact by automating outreach and reducing the number of steps between lead capture and advisor action.
Enhance personalization at scale
Segment leads by behavior, source and program of interest to deliver more relevant, timely communication and guide better conversations.
Centralize admissions data
Create a single source of truth for outreach, engagement and lead progression—from initial inquiry to enrollment.
Strengthen reporting and attribution
Enable real-time visibility into campaign performance, rep activity and conversion points to support continuous optimization.
Support scalable growth
Lay a flexible foundation that could evolve with CSU’s enrollment strategy and empower teams to launch campaigns without IT dependency.

Results - Faster Outreach, Smarter Operations and Measurable Growth

Prior to partnering with Mole Street, CSU was bogged down by disconnected systems that forced a cumbersome, inefficient approach to admissions. Teams were left heavy-footed—juggling manual tasks, delayed outreach and limited visibility across the funnel.

Now, CSU is empowered with maximum operational agility—reflected in a 70% increase in daily advisor call activity. It’s a transformation that has rippled to all corners of the institution.

Metric	Before Mole Street	After HubSpot Implementation
Daily Calls per Advisor	~63 calls	~109 calls (+70%)
Talk Time per Advisor	1 hour 32 minutes/day	2 hours 23 minutes/day (+55%)
Call Volume (New Hires, 2 Weeks)	2,450 total	4,252 total (+74%)
Email Campaign Impact	Campaigns required IT and cross-team coordination	122 enrollments from 1 campaign—launched by an advisor
Outreach Workflow	Manual, one-by-one emails/texts	Automated, behavior-based sequences
Speed-to-Lead	Delayed by manual handoffs	Real-time follow-up workflows triggered by lead actions
Reporting & Attribution	Manual, surface-level metrics	Real-time visibility into advisor, campaign and funnel performance
Enrollment Conversion Rate	Baseline	+16.6% YTD increase

Misfiring Campaigns and Data Blind Spots

The limited segmentation and automation features hindered WVDT’s ability to personalize its marketing efforts. Consequently, WVDT was forced to create broad campaigns that failed to maximize its marketing potential.

Creating marketing emails was cumbersome due to the complex interface and limited flexibility. This required external support, further complicating the workflow.

Moreover, Salesforce Marketing Cloud lacked integrated tools and features necessary for real-time analytics and detailed tracking. As a result, WVDT could not keep its finger on the pulse of user interactions. With no metrics to guide them, WVDT was flying blind in their marketing.

Poor User Experience and Increased Workload

WVDT’s B2B portal was outdated and dysfunctional. This created a barrier that prevented users from accessing vital information, managing advertising campaigns, as well as engaging with the Tourism Board.

Although the portal was built on a reliable CMS, it was dependent on receiving data from Salesforce custom objects. Consequently, this made the system rigid and awkward to use which provided limited control over the design and user experience.