Eliminating Data Gaps, Accelerating Enrollment: Utah State University’s Event Transformation with Salesforce and Blackthorn

Utah State University supports a broad network of prospective students, families, and school partners through a high-volume event strategy designed to drive recruitment, engagement, and enrollment. Within the university’s Division of Student Success, Strategic Enrollment Management powers the systems, communications, and operational infrastructure behind those efforts.

Ian Anderson, who leads Enrollment Strategy and Innovation, oversees the systems and data that support multiple enrollment-focused teams, including Admissions Pathways and Engagement, Undergraduate Recruitment, Student Orientation Transition Services, and Student Financial Support Services. On the front lines, Dallin Perkes, Assistant Director of Outreach and Engagement, oversees Utah State’s recruitment and admissions events, from daily campus tours to large on-campus programs and out-of-state events.

Together, their teams manage more than 1,000 events annually, spanning campus tours, open houses, yield events, leadership conferences, orientation programs, and large-scale campus experiences. These events collectively engage approximately 24,000 prospective students and guests each year, making them a critical driver of Utah State’s enrollment strategy.

As Utah State prepared for a major CRM transformation, the university saw an opportunity to rethink how events were managed and how event data could better support student recruitment outcomes.

As Utah State continues to modernize its event strategy inside Salesforce, the team also shared what they’ve learned along the way. Ian Anderson joined Blackthorn’s  live session on April 9, Stop Losing Leads: The Real Reason Your Data Isn’t Making it To Salesforce, alongside Matt Frank, Alliances & Technology Evangelist at Blackthorn, to walk through how Utah State is eliminating data gaps, improving visibility, and connecting event engagement directly to enrollment outcomes. >> Watch the  on-demand session now <<

Before Blackthorn, Utah State managed events through Ellucian Recruit CRM, which included a built-in event management tool, while also using Cvent for one major leadership conference. Event data from Cvent had to be downloaded and manually uploaded into the CRM, creating extra work and introducing risk into the process.

The bigger challenge, however, was usability and scale. Attendance tracking was highly manual. For large events, staff relied on spreadsheets to check attendees in, often sharing a single registration list across eight to ten staff members. After the event, someone had to manually update every attendee record in the CRM. For events with 500 to 600 attendees, that process could take one to two hours.

As Dallin explained, “we would have to manually go through and mark every single person that was actually there based off of the sheet that we had as attended in our CRM.” For daily campus tours, that same process repeated twice a day. Staff printed check-in sheets every morning, used them throughout the day, and then returned later to update attendance records manually.

Customization was another pain point. Forms could be changed in the previous system, but doing so often required support from a system administrator. That meant event managers sometimes avoided making needed updates, even when fields were irrelevant, or the registrant experience suffered. Ian noted that giving more power to the event managers, “those that know the event and have that expertise,” was an important goal in the move to a new platform.

Those limitations also showed up in reporting and communications. If attendance was not updated quickly enough, students who had attended could still receive automated “we missed you” follow-ups.

The operational cost added up quickly. On average, Utah State estimates that approximately 10 hours per week were spent on manual event management tasks, often more during peak recruitment seasons.

As Utah State expanded its event strategy, the university needed more than a replacement tool. It needed a platform that could move faster, reduce manual work, and give event managers the flexibility to build the right experience for each audience.

Utah State’s decision to adopt Blackthorn came at the same time it was implementing Salesforce Education Cloud as part of a broader university initiative called OneUSU CRM. Recruiting and admissions were the first to move into Salesforce, with advancement and student success following behind.

That broader shift created a clear requirement: event management needed to work natively inside Salesforce.

Ellucian Recruit was effectively going away for Utah State’s use case, and the university would have had to start over anyway. At the same time, Salesforce Professional Services had explicitly identified event management as outside the scope of the university’s Education Cloud implementation. That made the need for a dedicated event platform immediate.

Blackthorn stood out quickly. Ian had experience with the realities of maintaining integrations, APIs, and data syncs across systems and wanted to avoid introducing another layer of complexity.

“We purposely chose Blackthorn, so we didn’t have to deal with all of that,” he said.

Even though Cvent was already in use elsewhere at the university and had internal support, Utah State intentionally chose a different path for enrollment and advancement events. The team did not need a conference-grade platform for every use case. It needed a flexible, Salesforce-native solution that could support many events at scale without the cost, complexity, and integration burden of an external system.

“When it came to cost, being native to Salesforce, and the ability to implement quickly—it was a no-brainer.”  — Ian Anderson

For Ian, Blackthorn’s native architecture was the first selling point, but not the only one.

“The people,” he said, were equally important. “I could tell that they knew the product and they believed in it, and I could tell that they love their job, and that matters more than anything to me.”

With support from enrollment leadership, advancement stakeholders, finance, and the CIO’s office, Utah State was able to align on a solution that fit its long-term Salesforce strategy while meeting immediate operational needs.

With Blackthorn embedded into Education Cloud from the start, Utah State established an event foundation designed to scale with the rest of its CRM

Hear from Ian Anderson, Director of Enrollment Strategy & Innovation at Utah State University, and Matt Frank, Alliances & Technology Evangelist at Blackthorn, in this on-demand session, Stop Losing Leads: The Real Reason Your Event Data Isn’t Making It to Salesforce.

You’ll get a behind-the-scenes look at how Utah State eliminated manual processes, improved data accuracy, and built a scalable event strategy inside Salesforce.

>> Watch the on-demand session now <<

Utah State went live with Blackthorn in August 2025, alongside the early phase of its Education Cloud rollout. The timeline was ambitious, but the team moved quickly.

With support from Blackthorn’s onboarding team, Dallin and his colleagues built out their event structure, tested across environments, and launched fall events in time for the new recruitment cycle. That progress was especially notable because the events team had no prior experience with Salesforce.

As Dallin described it, onboarding was highly collaborative. “Jared [Customer Onboarding and Enablement Manager] was such an easy person to work with,” he said. “He was always open to having a quick 20-minute conversation.”

Between regular meetings, office hours, and ongoing support, Utah State’s team was able to troubleshoot custom needs, refine workflows, and keep momentum moving toward launch.

The immediate impact was most visible in check-in and attendance.

Instead of managing spreadsheets and shared check-in tables, Utah State now uses Blackthorn’s check-in app to move attendees through the process significantly faster. The team estimates saving 30 seconds to 1 minute per attendee, dramatically reducing lines and improving the overall event experience.

More importantly, the improvement changed how staff could be deployed. Instead of assigning eight to ten full-time staff members to check in, the university now operates with just one to two staff members, freeing others to focus on student engagement.

Dallin explained that Utah State trains student workers in “aggressive assistance”—actively engaging visitors, answering questions, and creating a welcoming environment.

“It’s just been so nice,” he said. “It’s really streamlined a lot of things.”

Blackthorn also gave event managers greater flexibility. Teams can now build event-specific forms and experiences without relying on system administrators, improving both efficiency and the registrant experience.

Beyond admissions events, Utah State is already expanding its use of Blackthorn across the institution, including orientation, graduate school events, and large-scale conferences supported by Blackthorn Navigator.

One of the most significant changes since implementing Blackthorn has been how work is distributed across the events team.

Previously, only one or two individuals managed event setup, often spending several days building out an entire semester of events.

Today, event creation is shared across the team. Different staff members own different event categories, supported by reusable templates and configurations that reduce duplication and speed up setup.

Dallin described the shift clearly, “It was kind of a bonding experience for all of us to get in there at the same time and start learning this together.”

That shift has led to measurable efficiency gains. Utah State estimates:

• 2–3 hours saved per event, depending on size and complexity
• 1,000+ hours saved annually
• Significant reduction in manual effort across setup, attendance tracking, and reporting

The impact extends beyond time savings. With less manual work, the team can focus more on strategy, student engagement, and continuous improvement.

Ian emphasized that this outcome was especially meaningful given that the team started with zero Salesforce experience and still went live in just a few months.

Utah State’s use of Blackthorn continues to expand across the university.

Advancement is beginning its own implementation as part of its Salesforce rollout. The graduate school is exploring event use cases. Orientation has already integrated Blackthorn into its workflows.

Looking ahead, the university sees strong potential to extend Blackthorn into student success initiatives, where event participation could help inform retention and persistence strategies.

This next phase is especially compelling. By connecting event data directly to the enrollment funnel, Utah State will be able to track how event participation influences application, admission, and enrollment outcomes.

At the same time, the team continues refining its event ecosystem, improving data collection, enhancing conference experiences through Navigator, and streamlining payment workflows within Salesforce.

As more teams adopt the platform, Blackthorn is becoming a foundational part of Utah State’s broader CRM strategy.

For Utah State, ROI is both immediate and long-term.

Operationally, Blackthorn has reduced manual work, accelerated event execution, and enabled a small team to manage a large and growing event portfolio more efficiently.

Strategically, the impact is even greater.

Blackthorn provides a direct path to connecting event participation with enrollment outcomes. The team can now build reports that show registrations, attendance, and, soon, conversion through the enrollment funnel.

Because Blackthorn is native to Salesforce, reporting is faster, more flexible, and easier to share with leadership.

As Ian summarized: “Blackthorn Events delivers strong ROI by giving us a higher education-focused, Salesforce-native event platform with unlimited users and events, streamlined registration and check-in, and no need for external connectors—all while advancing our unified CRM strategy.”

When asked why they would recommend Blackthorn, the answer came down to two things: ease and trust.

For Dallin, it was simplicity. “It’s just easy, honestly.” For Ian, it was confidence in the team behind the product.

Together, those elements gave Utah State more than an event platform; they provided a scalable foundation for growth, powered by both technology and partnership.