How Salesforce Marketing Cloud supports Higher Education fundraising activities from A to Z

This article was updated on January 13, 2026 with an up-to-date FAQ section.

The higher education space is a world on its own when it comes to sales and marketing – and not a comfortable one to be in. Competition is fierce. Sales cycles are long, with short opportunity windows and both “now or never” and “life-time-value” considerations. SalesWings met with John Duncan, Vice President of Sales and Business Development at Offprem, a leading Salesforce Marketing Cloud partner for many years. John has over 15 years of experience in higher education and nonprofit leadership, serving as a student affairs administrator and faculty member at the University of Michigan and the University of Oregon and later as the chief development officer at a nonprofit educational foundation in central Indiana. Over the last 4 years, John has helped hundreds of educational institutions and nonprofit organizations find success with Salesforce solutions. 

Offprem:  Higher Education is in a constant state of transformation – presenting both exciting opportunities and daunting challenges. As a former University advancement professional, I have taken an active role in responding to the current needs of our educational endeavors while working towards identifying and implementing strategies that respond to the needs of tomorrow. Without question, the increased utilization of technology combined with dynamic public/private partnerships will be a vital part of the next evolution within Higher Education.

The current state of transformation has created a driving need for universities and colleges to evolve into technologically savvy organizations that leverage dynamic email, social, mobile, and cloud technologies to drive mission, purpose, goals and solutions. My role at Offprem – amongst others – is to help inspire and support our education clients as they explore, adopt and deploy Salesforce solutions such as Marketing Cloud, and other “studios” such as the SalesWings lead management solution.

The increased utilization of technology combined will be a vital part of the next evolution within Higher Education #marketingcloud #highered John Duncan Click to tweet

Offprem: There are many partnership opportunities with the higher education community. These Institutions are distinct – many of which function like small interconnected cities. As a result, you have multiple decision makers across the institutional landscape that represent deep wells of domain knowledge and who administer important functional areas on behalf of the University or College.

The areas that most often adopt Salesforce marketing automation solutions include Admissions/Enrolment, Advancement/Alumni Affairs, and Central Marketing/Communication Departments. Distance Learning/Extension programs and Professional Schools within the campus community are also early adopters, most notably Business Schools. More recently, business units associated with Student Affairs, University Athletics and Arts and Cultural Centers have begun to adopt more advanced marketing solutions as well.

While some campuses are in a position to adopt the enterprise model at the beginning, most organizations will stair-step their adoption process until they can fully adopt the Salesforce Connected Campus model.

Offprem: Higher Education institutions are deeply branded enterprises that in many ways represent the pinnacle of the “consumer” experience – a deep visceral experience that often generates a lifetime of loyalty and engagement. As a result of this type of experience and the subsequent relationships that stem from it, Higher Education generally hasn’t had to rely on advanced marketing automation, among other things, until recently.

In response to a wide variety of industry wide challenges, ranging from an ongoing reduction in state and federal funding to an overall decline in the total population of traditional age college students, Universities and Colleges have looked to enhance their ability to position their brand to donors, alumni, parents, prospective students and other critical constituents. To be – or continue to be – highly competitive, institutions are seeking to expand their brand regionally, nationally and globally.  The most effective and cost-conscious way to accomplish this is to expand their digital footprint and Marketing Cloud offers a perfect vehicle for this effort.

Every institution has a unique story to tell and Marketing Cloud is the perfect vehicle to help share that story. #marketingcloud #highereducation John Duncan Click to tweet

Offprem: Every institution has a unique story to tell and Marketing Cloud is the perfect vehicle to help share that story. It allows Universities and Colleges to communicate custom/focused content at scale – empowering colleagues to leverage all contact data/constituent content available in their database of record to create personal Journey’s that shares a story that is meaningful to each constituent and typically results in significantly increased engagement with the institution. Additionally, Marketing Cloud can scale across the campus community through the use of an Enterprise structure that deploys Business Units in a Parent and Child account model. This allows the institution to maintain an administrative account (Parent) that has visibility and oversight into all subsequent production accounts (Child Business Units). Each of these production Business Units/Child Accounts can be assigned to Departments, Divisions, Schools/Colleges on campus – they will not have visibility or access into each others accounts unless that permission is granted.

As a result of this enterprise structuring, the institution can now track all email sends, ensuring that constituents aren’t getting too many emails in any given cycle. It can also help with planning campaigns, ensuring departments aren’t inadvertently sending conflicting messages to the same constituent group at the same time. It also provides visibility into data tracking results, allowing the institution to ascertain who is opening and clicking on their content. Though there are many other reasons that make Marketing Cloud a great fit for Higher Education, the final item that I wanted to call attention to is the Omni or Multi-Channel capability of Marketing Cloud. Within a single user interface, colleagues can create Journey’s that include email, SMS/Mobile, digital advertising and social channels – allowing colleagues to create a powerful communication and engagement experience for their subscribers/constituents. Additional, within the Salesforce App Exchange, this application integrates with select print vendors, allowing you to build a Journey that includes a combined digital AND print effort in a single user interface. Again, I can go on for a while about how this platform can impact Higher Education, but we save that for the next article!

Offprem: The concept of lead qualification is very important in Higher Education, particularly as it pertains to Admissions/Recruitment and Advancement/Fundraising. This is where SalesWings provides a key “studio” with its lead management component SalesWings. Let’s dive in a bit deeper into Advancement as an example. Most, if not all, Universities and Colleges maintain an Annual Giving program – encouraging prospects and donors to contribute on a monthly or annual basis to support the mission of the institution. This is a commitment to educational equity, affordability, and the role of education in economic prosperity, all of which align with the principles advocated by individuals like Google’s Kamau Bobb, who work to improve education access and opportunities for all individuals.

The focus of annual giving is to retain current donors year over year, upgrade current donors to a higher giving level and to acquire new donors to the institution. Each of these annual giving focus areas would benefit deeply by a set of scoring metrics that helped them understand prospect/donor behavior, engagement levels and demographics, among other important pieces of information that can be gleaned through this process.

SalesWings successfully identifies a lead’s intent and timing, and pushes the data natively into Marketing Cloud and Sales Cloud. This information can allow them create, direct and syndicate relevant content to constituents, it can help them understand the preferred communication channel for their prospects and donors and it can help them fill out persona information so that they can more fully and effectively focus on what is important to particular constituents.

Offprem: When I was first introduced to Salesforce technology 4+ years ago – I was fascinated by their approach to Higher Education. They didn’t have all of the answers – but they were curious, and deeply innovative. From supporting better enrollment and recruitment practices to enhancing the ability to effectively cultivate, solicit and steward important donors – they have constantly been evolving. A key component to this evolution has been an exciting partnership with firms like SalesWings. SalesWings recognized the impact that its products and services could have on educational institutions and sought to augment one of the most powerful marketing automation platforms on the market today and make it better.

The metrics and data that SalesWings can capture with its lead scoring capability within Marketing Cloud is like adding premium jet fuel to a rocket – it just gets you where you want to go faster and more efficiently. Offprem and SalesWings have partnered with Salesforce to embark on a continuous journey of evolving products, services and people dedicated to the success of Higher Education. In many ways, these organizations epitomize the concept of learning organizations and the educator in me celebrates and deeply appreciates this.

SalesWings recognized the importance of identifying lead intent to be more relevant and brings it to the Marketing Cloud #marketingcloud #highereducation #B2B John Duncan Click to tweet

Offprem: This is a tough question! Each Studio/area of functionality within Marketing Cloud serves a significant purpose. The core functionality is Email Studio, which allows you to utilize Journey Builder to deploy sophisticated campaigns that can include capability from the other Studio’s to build Omni/Multi-Channel Journey’s that can include SMS/Mobile, digital advertising, etc. When first adopting Marketing Cloud, most colleagues rightfully begin with Email Studio and the associated “Builders” and then activate the additional Studio’s over time.

Today, I see a lot more colleagues beginning to adopt Advertising Studio – allowing them to manage placement of digital content into Facebook, Google Ads and so forth. This feature allows users to conduct activities like “look a like” campaigns in Facebook – utilizing current constituent data to form a look a like audience within Facebook that you can subsequently post ads to. For instance, you have an MBA program that attracts constituents with particular profile attributes. Using those attributes for existing constituents, you can create a look a like group and market your MBA program to them.

Offprem: Offprem is a very family-oriented organization and everyone enjoys spending a good deal of time with their loved ones. Everyone on our team also enjoys travel when and where possible – we are a fairly active bunch! I should also note, our team maintains several pop culture buffs, which means you hear a lot of movie quotes, book references and so on around the office!

Offprem: Thank you for the opportunity to connect – we would love to sync again in the future. The world of marketing technology is constantly evolving, so we are happy to revisit this topic again soon.

What tips do you have for using SFMC for student recruitment priorities?

Enrollment and advancement can share Marketing Cloud while keeping distinct journeys, letting both teams coordinate brand storytelling and avoid competing outreach.

Use separate Business Units and shared standards so recruitment runs prospect nurturing while advancement manages fundraising appeals. Behavior captured during recruitment can later inform alumni content preferences, improving post-graduation engagement.

Tip: align on a common experience strategy and preference center; for student CX opportunities, review this practical guide.

How can I implement lead scoring as part of my SFMC higher ed stack?

Integrating SalesWings brings behavior-based lead scoring into Marketing Cloud, helping advancement qualify prospects and time appeals based on real intent signals.

Scores derived from page visits, email engagement, and form submissions sync to Marketing and Sales Cloud, enabling journeys that prioritize high-propensity donors and alert gift officers at the right moment. You can also enrich personas with interests to route constituents into the most relevant content tracks.

Tip: define clear thresholds for cultivation versus solicitation to reduce premature asks.

About the author and Offprem

Founded in 2015 and located in Fishers Indiana, Offprem Technology maintains more than 60 years of collective digital marketing experience. Established by technology industry veteran Greg Purcell, Offprem uses its in-depth knowledge of Salesforce Marketing Cloud and combines it with a unique talent for developing strategy aligned with business results. Greg worked at Salesforce from 2008-2016 as Technical Architect, Solutions Architect and Manager of Services implementing the Marketing Cloud’s most complex enterprise clients and currently serves as the Managing Partner for Offprem. Joining Greg on the leadership team is Salesforce.org and education industry veteran John Duncan. John has over 15 years of experience in higher education and nonprofit leadership, serving as a student affairs administrator and faculty member at the University of Michigan and the University of Oregon and later as the chief development officer at a nonprofit educational foundation in central Indiana. Over the last 4 years, John has helped hundreds of educational institutions and nonprofit organizations find success with Salesforce solutions.

Offprem has 20 team members focused on delivering high impact Marketing Cloud and implementation services. Collectively, we maintain 26 Marketing Cloud Certifications (including 2 Marketing Cloud Developer Certs), 5 Social Specialist Certifications, 5 Pardot Specializations and 22 additional cross Cloud Certifications. Our team has worked with over 280 Marketing Cloud clients on over 350 projects. Additionally, two of our Consultants serve as instructors for Salesforce Trailhead (formerly Salesforce University) and have completed over 1,200 hrs of training through 40 separate courses. Offprem maintains a membership in both Marketing Cloud and Salesforce.org’s Partner Programs.