“If you talk to our students, you know the difference the FFB program has made in their transition into university,” says Dr. Al Goss, associate dean, students. “It would not have been possible without Shabnam recognizing and embracing the Salesforce platform, and I am thrilled that she is being recognized for her work.”
Salesforce is a customer relationship management tool that assists in building connection and responsiveness to community needs.
During the pandemic when students were going through their first year completely online, building a sense of community was more important than ever. The foundation of FFB is the TedPack – a cohort of students that have the same courses in their first term to help create a community. Ahmad built on the TedPack structure by designating first-year students as TedPack Leaders and adding senior students to each group as TedPack Mentors.
In addition, through a personalized weekly FFB email – one centralized channel exclusive to first-year students – students receive communication on everything needed to navigate their first year. To encourage first-year students to take advantage of the services and unique offerings available, the FFB program rewards them with TedPoints for engaging beyond the classroom.
Under Ahmad’s leadership, the FFB team leveraged Salesforce, Marketing Cloud and Tableau to make data-informed decisions, and engaged over 70% of unique first-year students with 30,000+ hours of engagement beyond the classroom during the year of launch (2020-21). The team also implemented a streamlined communication strategy with Marketing Cloud to keep students informed and achieved a 72% average email open rate, which is two times higher than the current industry average.
