Case Study: George Warren Brown School gains insight into 50,000 constituents and strengthens relationships with Alvaria

Grad School Gains Insight into 50,000 Constituents, Grows Relationships by Using CRM System

The George Warren Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis is a graduate school focused on social work and public-health education that struggled with fragmented constituent data—up to 16 different systems—and poor adoption of both a homegrown and a commercial CRM. This made it difficult to identify overlapping relationships among alumni, donors, partners and organizations, wasted staff time preparing information, and led to duplicate communications and costly print overruns.

The school deployed and customized Microsoft Dynamics CRM with help from Aspect Software, hosted alongside the university’s Olin Business School and integrated with ExactTarget for email marketing, consolidating roughly 50,000 individuals and 7,000 organizations (with about one-third of staff using the system). The solution improved constituent insight and coordination, enabled targeted campaigns with 20–25% open rates (vs. a 16% average), cut returned-mail to under 3%, expanded magazine distribution by 30%, reduced print overruns, and delivered better adoption at a lower total cost.

George Warren Brown School

Ellen Rostand

Assistant Dean for Communications