Tyndale University modernizes admissions with Conga Composer

Elevating the student experience

New students are the lifeblood of any institute of higher learning. Each year, Tyndale University welcomes a diverse range of domestic and international students to its Toronto campus and online classrooms to participate in a variety of undergraduate, graduate, and seminary programs.

The higher education landscape is highly competitive, and Tyndale leaders know that engaging prospective students in an approachable and personalized manner is especially important for earning and affirming their commitment to the school in the presence of many other options.

As part of the transformation, Tyndale implemented a new CRM to collect and integrate student data, generate documents, and keep records for compliance purposes. “We wanted to have all the tools we’d need in one place to establish and maintain communication with students throughout their Tyndale journey,” says Andrew Mugford, Digital Marketing Specialist at Tyndale University, “And with a small admissions team, our focus was on figuring out how to do that efficiently every day.” 

Automation that drives personalized admissions

As part of its comprehensive focus on the student experience, Tyndale’s admissions team wanted to be able to simplify and automate its processes for generating and sending acceptance letters — an important first engagement with a prospective student.  

Today, Tyndale University uses document management solutions including Conga Composer along with its Salesforce CRM to automate critical student touchpoints that get the relationship and experience off on the right foot.  

Conga Composer’s automated workflows enable Tyndale users to collect and merge student data from Salesforce, automatically creating and storing acceptance letters with ease. Before sending, the admissions team conducts a manual review, after which they can finalize and send letters with a single click. With Conga and Salesforce, the team creates and sends up to 20 acceptance letters per week, with an additional bi-annual bulk acceptance process that includes up to 100 acceptance letters.  

Conga Composer not only helps overcome the challenges of managing a high volume of letters, but advanced functionality also makes it possible to customize every letter by degree, student type, and signatory — without manual intervention.

Mugford and his teammates can further ease their burden by leveraging advanced Conga Composer functionality like dynamic templates, conditional formatting and TableHide to avoid the headache of having to navigate dozens of acceptance letter templates.  

 

Another creative solution the team has developed with the help of Conga Composer is using the signature merge field. This functionality ensures that all copies, both digital and physical, include the correct signatures automatically – eliminating the need for manual signing. By seamlessly pulling saved e-signatures from Salesforce, the admissions team streamlines the acceptance process, saving time and effort for both staff and designated signers. 

Mugford shares that the ability to track everything that goes out to students in Salesforce led to another unanticipated — but hugely valuable — benefit: the ability to automate compliance tasks when they arise.

“Our commitment to providing students with access to financial aid means we undergo periodic audits every few years,” he says. “With Conga and Salesforce, it’s easy to quickly pull data directly out of the system knowing that it’s accurate and complete.” 

Support beyond the software

As Mugford continues to explore and find different ways to bring value to his university with Conga Composer, he’s found the support and creative ideas shared in the Conga Community user group invaluable. 

Today, Conga Composer is a fundamental part of the university’s admissions office. “Conga isn’t just an extraneous nice-to-have,” Mugford says. “It’s really a key part of what we do.”