Case Study: Penn State expands educational reach to 100,000 annual registrations with Cvent

Penn State - Customer Case Study

Penn State’s Office of Conferences and Short Courses (OCSC) in the College of Agricultural Sciences faced an unsustainable, labor-intensive events process: multiple databases, manual registration and mailing, inconsistent fees and branding, and growing online demand that limited outreach across the state. To better deliver extension programs, conferences and non-credit offerings from campus to communities, the university needed a scalable, professional registration and marketing solution.

Partnering with Cvent, OCSC moved to online registration, digital marketing, standardized service tiers and data-driven reporting. Adoption was immediate—250 online registrations in an afternoon for one event and 90% self-registration by 2018—and the university scaled from dozens to hundreds of programs (programs increased roughly sixfold) while supporting more than 100,000 annual registrations across units. The switch cut marketing costs, improved targeting and participant insight, increased revenue (about $2M to internal clients) and enabled broader, more efficient delivery of Penn State’s outreach mission.

Penn State

Mary Seaton

Assistant Director of College Relations