Case Study: University of Wisconsin–Madison achieves scalable campus-wide recruiting and enrollment growth with Salesforce for Nonprofits

Salesforce Powers Multiple Recruiting Efforts Across UW–Madison

The University of Wisconsin–Madison needed a single, campus-wide CRM to support distinct recruiting needs: the Office of Undergraduate Admissions had to manage outreach to a pool of up to 100,000 prospects, while the Division of Continuing Studies needed to build enrollment for new graduate programs and reach adult learners. Previously reliant on a patchwork of tools, both units sought a scalable, flexible platform that could be used in the same instance but configured for different workflows.

UW–Madison implemented Salesforce Education Cloud (including Service Cloud, Premier Success, and a Customer Success Architect) to meet those needs, enabling unified support, rapid deployment, and strong end-user adoption. The platform helped Admissions interact 1:1 at scale and contributed to 10% year-over-year growth in first‑year enrollment, while Continuing Studies expanded to 88 graduate programs enrolling 6,000 students per semester and saw a 64% increase in leads and a 91% increase in submitted applications for its engineering accelerated master’s programs.

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Brad Richardson

Associate Director of Information Systems and Technology