University of San Francisco Unified Marketing Data Across Six Schools

For the University of San Francisco's Digital Marketing team, Monday mornings meant one thing: hours spent downloading data and wrestling with spreadsheets—just to produce basic reports. Peter Sahaidachny, Digital Marketing Manager at USF, knew something had to change. 

This story reveals how USF transformed its approach to marketing analytics and achieved remarkable results that rippled across the entire university.

Marketing data consumed valuable time and resources

At the University of San Francisco, the Digital Marketing team was responsible for reporting performance across 11+ marketing channels used by six different schools within the university. However, this process, at some point, turned into a significant operational burden.

This manual approach created multiple challenges that impacted the entire marketing operation:

• Accuracy issues: Human error in data handling frequently resulted in problems like mismatched file headers from different platforms, undermining confidence in reporting.
• Technical bottlenecks: The process required SQL knowledge and database management skills, creating dependencies on technical resources.
• Strategic opportunity cost: Perhaps most costly was the time diverted from high-value activities like campaign optimization, audience analysis, and strategic planning. With so much time devoted to data collection, the team couldn't leverage valuable data points that could have informed better marketing decisions.

For a university marketing team with limited resources but ambitious goals, this inefficient data process wasn't just an inconvenience—it was actively limiting their marketing effectiveness and return on investment.

Creating a centralized marketing data ecosystem

With Improvado, USF implemented a comprehensive solution that addressed all their data challenges. The university was able to:

• Eliminate their database costs: USF offloaded the entire data pipeline process to Improvado.
• Pass rigorous security standards: USF's IT department conducted a full security audit and quickly approved the Improvado partnership.
• Automate the entire reporting workflow: From data collection to visualization in Tableau.

From weekly reports to daily

Offloading the entire data pipeline to Improvado transformed USF's marketing operations.

First, they eliminated 192 hours of manual reporting annually. The team also shifted its focus from data aggregation and cleansing to strategic analysis and optimization.

They also increased reporting frequency from weekly to daily, providing up-to-date information in Tableau that excited the entire university ecosystem.

Unlocking better data utilization and decision-making

Beyond time savings, Improvado enabled USF to leverage data in ways that weren't previously possible. The team gained access to previously untapped metrics, including geographic information, gender, device preferences, and organic social data from Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, including likes, comments, and shares.

Previously, Tableau reports were just client-facing reports, and the marketing team was still logging in to the different marketing platforms to get a better read. Now, the marketing team has finally gained complete confidence in their Tableau reports, eliminating the need for cross-platform verification and SQL knowledge.