Case Study
Higher Education
One of the world’s largest universities got GDPR ready with Cassie
Our Client:
‘’Our mission is to make learning accessible to all.’’ – Their mission statement.
One university’s ambition changed the world: give anyone, anywhere the power to learn. For the last 50 years, our client has pioneered distance learning, delivering exceptional teaching and outstanding support to students across Europe and the world.
Fast facts:
Size
Over 200,000 active students
Industry
Higher education
Region
Europe
Key Regulations
GDPR
Products
Consent Management Platform (CMP)
Their challenge:
Our client’s key challenge was to implement an automated solution that complies with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR):
As of May 25th 2018, the GDPR requires all HEIs (Higher Education Institutions) to manage the processing of their customers’ personal data under the stricter consent conditions of the new data protection regulation.
Specifically, our client’s marketing team will be unable to directly market to any new or existing enquirers (other than sending the information requested in the initial inquiry) without the enquirer’s consent.
The problem affects all their customers (enquirers, applicants, students, alumni, apprentices, and sponsored students) who share personal data with the administrative staff (who record customers’ personal details) and the marketing staff (who send communications to customers which are not related to the contract with the student).
If they didn’t achieve GDPR compliance:
Failure to comply with GDPR could have seen our client fined up to 20 million euros (or 4% of turnover). Plus, without collecting customer consent correctly, their ability to engage with potential customers and convert them into paying students would have been severely impacted – resulting in an anticipated drop in student numbers of over 7%.
What’s the solution:
Our client needed a dedicated CMP that allows the marketing department to bulk capture clear, unambiguous consent in order to contact enquirers for the purposes of marketing.
This solution must also clearly record their communication preferences across multiple channels (e-mail, telephone, post, SMS, digital).
How we helped:
Cassie by Syrenis was chosen by our client’s IT department in early December 2017.
We delivered a tailor-made CMP that provides simple, user-friendly solutions, and empowers our client to maximize their data.
The results:
Thanks to our dedicated CMP, we were able to help our client go beyond compliance and truly meet the needs of all their internal and external customers.
We proved that we genuinely care about their students’ rights throughout their educational journey and we understand the privacy needs and expectations of their generation X customers.
But most importantly, thanks to Cassie, we were able to solve their biggest challenge: we helped them achieve GDPR compliance whilst giving their students control over their consent and preferences.