Case Study

From Zero Visibility to Full Insight: How OCAD U Modernized Student Communications with Envoke

Canada’s top art and design university modernized student communications with Envoke — replacing a legacy system and sending 45,000+ emails across 19 sub-accounts.

Key Highlights

Organization Overview

OCAD University (Ontario College of Art & Design University) is Canada’s largest and most comprehensive art, design, and media university. Founded in 1876 and based in Toronto, Ontario, the institution serves students across undergraduate and graduate programs, with student-facing communications managed out of the Office of Student Affairs and the Registrar’s Office.

At a Glance

4,500 registered students
19 active Envoke sub-accounts across departments
45,000+ emails sent through Envoke
~3 years on the Envoke platform

The Challenge

For years, OCAD University’s student communications ran through a legacy tool inside their Colleague student information system. As the institution’s communication needs grew across 4,500 students and multiple departments, the limitations of that system became impossible to ignore.

No Performance Visibility: Once a message was sent, it was gone. There was no way to see whether students had opened it, clicked through, or engaged at all. The team was sending emails with no way to measure whether their communications were landing.
Unreliable Delivery: Messages would sometimes fail mid-send, requiring staff to manually coordinate with the Registrar’s data team to determine who had received a message and who hadn’t.
Hard-Coded HTML with No Design Capability: Every email had to be manually coded in HTML and dropped into text fields. Adding an image or a button was simply not possible, resulting in plain, hard-to-read messages that didn’t reflect the university’s creative identity.
Data Privacy and Compliance Risk: Some departments had independently adopted tools like Mailchimp for better functionality, but the team flagged data privacy concerns and CASL compliance implications. There was no enterprise-wide solution that kept Canadian student data in Canada.

The Solution

About three years ago, OCAD University assembled a cross-functional working group, including communications leads and IT representatives to evaluate email platforms. After assessing Constant Contact, Mailchimp, and several other tools, the group selected Envoke as the solution that best fit their needs: a Canadian-built, CASL-compliant platform with the features and flexibility a complex institution requires.

The rollout began with student-facing newsletters. From there, Sarah and her team expanded Envoke to cover all registrar student communications, the function that had previously depended entirely on the legacy Colleague tool. Today, the platform supports 19 sub-accounts across student affairs, the Registrar’s Office, and Marketing and Communications.

Key capabilities driving adoption:

Audience Segmentation with Tags and Lists: The team builds unique, targeted lists for every student cohort, enabling precise outreach that matches the right message to the right audience.
Performance Analytics: For the first time, Sarah’s team can see open rates, clicks, and engagement data on every send, turning email into a measurable, evidence-based communications channel.
Professional Email Design: With Envoke’s visual builder, messages now include branded imagery and clear calls to action, a significant upgrade from plain-text HTML for an institution built on art and design.
API Integration with Colleague SIS: Select sub-accounts are connected to OCAD U’s student information system via API, enabling automated list syncing and reducing manual data management.
CASL Compliance and Canadian Data Residency: As a Canadian platform, Envoke gave OCAD U’s IT team confidence that student data stays in Canada and that all outbound communications meet CASL requirements.

The Results

Full visibility across 45,000+ emails
The shift from the Colleague tool to Envoke gave OCAD U something they’d never had before: performance data. Across more than 45,000 emails sent through the platform, Sarah’s team can now see exactly how students interact with every message from the Registrar’s Office.

"We had no insights on how those messages performed. Now we can see what happens with those messages: how many students actually opened them, what resonated, and how many acted. This information gives us essential feedback on how we can improve."

Sarah Mulholland
Director
Office of Student Affairs

Platform adoption across 19 sub-accounts
What started as a single newsletter has grown into a 19-sub-account infrastructure supporting communications across student affairs, the Registrar’s Office, and marketing. The Registrar’s Office, historically known for dense, difficult-to-read notices, now sends branded, well-structured messages built in Envoke. The Marketing & Communications office uses the platform for an internal employee newsletter, and the University is looking for other ways it can adopt the platform more broadly.

Communications that reflect OCAD U’s creative identity
The ability to include images, buttons, and structured layouts transformed how student messages look and feel. For an art and design university, the visual quality of communications matters and the previous HTML-only system simply couldn’t deliver.

Enterprise-wide compliance confidence
By consolidating 19 departments and teams onto a single Canadian platform, OCAD U eliminated the patchwork of unvetted tools that had created compliance risk. Envoke’s Canadian data residency and CASL compliance were central to IT sign-off and continue to be differentiators Sarah cites when recommending the platform to others.

Looking Forward

Expanding API data sync between Envoke and the Colleague student information system across additional sub-accounts to reduce manual list management and improve data accuracy.
Driving broader adoption, including migrating bi-weekly executive messages and other recurring institutional communications into Envoke.
Continuing to grow the Envoke footprint across OCAD U’s departments as more teams recognize the value of a centralized, compliant communications platform.

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