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00 / Case study / Centro de e-Learning UTN BA

1.65M emails turned into 1.65M conversations with context

51.85%

Open rate · ~2x online-education benchmark (25-35%)

SFMC reporting, UTN BA · Jan–Feb 2026

Client
Centro de e-Learning UTN BA
Industry
Online education
Engagement
2026-01/2026-02
Cleon's role
Architecture + implementation + operation
Stack
SFMC Journey BuilderSalesforce CRMLLM via API + MCPchatbot orchestrator

01 / The problem

UTN BA had a chatbot in development capturing lead conversations, but that signal was lost at the email layer: everyone got the same template — no nurturing, no funnel-stage segmentation.

The challenge wasn't volume — it was disconnection.

  • The chatbot captured each lead's specific intent (which course, which doubt, which level).
  • But email consumed that signal as a static template: everyone got the same message.
  • No nurturing strategy, no funnel-stage segmentation.
  • Result: flat engagement and rising CAC, with the most valuable signal — the conversation itself — sleeping in the system.

02 / Complexity

Previous attempts to process thousands of chat histories in real time collapsed the infrastructure: timeouts, latency, intermittent errors. This wasn't a data-availability problem — the chatbot, the CRM, and the data all existed. It was a scale problem: 351,000+ students, 650 courses, and roughly 1.65M sends per two-month cycle, run through a naive real-time lookup that couldn't hold under that load.

03 / System

UTN BA didn't need another tool — they needed a technical partner to articulate the pieces they already had. From Cleon we designed four moves:

  • An evolved conversational layer, built alongside UTN BA's own technical team.
  • Automated, generative email anchored to the conversation ID — the central innovation.
  • The chatbot repositioned as orchestrator across CRM, LLM, and Marketing Cloud.
  • An always-on journey, replacing the concept of a "mass send" entirely.

04 / Architecture

The chatbot acts as the orchestrator — talking to the LLM through API + MCP. Marketing Cloud pulls leads directly from Salesforce and queries the orchestrator's API at send-time for each email's generative body.

System diagram

DATA LAYER · SALESFORCE★ ORCHESTRATORGENERATIVE LAYER · CLEONEXECUTION LAYERlead · opp statedirect lead syncAPI + MCPAPI · email bodysendengagement → CRMSalesforce CRMLead · OpportunityChatbotUTN BA · CleonAPI · conversation IDAI · LLMgenerates bodyconv ID + lead stageSFMC · Journey Builderper-lead · always-onEmailone per lead
01

Evolved conversational layer (collab with UTN BA team)

Cleon worked alongside the UTN BA technical team to improve the existing chatbot — enriching intent capture and ensuring every conversation generated a unique, reusable identifier downstream.

02

Automated generative email anchored to the conversation ID

Architecture introduced by Cleon

The central innovation. Every email uses the lead's conversation ID as the key to retrieve the full chat history and feed it to a language model that writes the message body dynamically. These are not templates with variables — they are emails generated, one per lead, with the real conversational context and the funnel stage as input.

03

Chatbot-as-orchestrator: Salesforce CRM + AI + Marketing Cloud

The chatbot acts as the orchestrator: it coordinates calls to the LLM through API + MCP (Model Context Protocol) and writes Lead / Opportunity state into the Salesforce CRM. Marketing Cloud pulls leads directly from the CRM for audience segmentation and queries the orchestrator's API at send-time to generate each email's personalized body. Engagement flows back into the CRM so Lead stages and Opportunities stay in sync. Zero system downtime over 1.65M sends.

04

Always-on journey

Every chatbot conversation triggers an individualized flow. We removed the concept of "mass send" from the stack.

05 / Role

Cleon worked with UTN BA's technical team to evolve the chatbot and introduced a new architecture: nurturing leads at different funnel stages and generating hyper-personalized emails dynamically through a language model, using the lead's conversation ID as the key to retrieve the full history.

Cleon's role: architecture, implementation, and operation.

06 / Execution

Every chatbot conversation triggers an individualized flow — we removed the concept of "mass send" from the stack entirely.

Zero system downtime over 1.65M sends in its first two months live.

07 / Technology

The stack: SFMC Journey Builder for always-on, per-lead journeys; Salesforce CRM holding Lead/Opportunity state; a language model reached via API + MCP (Model Context Protocol) generating each email's body; and the chatbot itself repositioned as the orchestrator tying the three together.

08 / Outcome

Email went from a declining channel to the highest-relative-engagement channel at UTN BA. A ~20 percentage-point lift in open rate on 1.65M sends translates into incremental qualified-lead pipeline that the institution absorbs without adding marketing headcount — the marginal cost of the next personalized email trends to zero.

The conversation ID → CRM → language model → Marketing Cloud architecture solved a problem most orgs with chatbot + CRM + email have today: the pieces exist, the layer that articulates them does not. From this pattern, Cleon developed an in-house leadbot + generative orchestration product that extends the same architecture to clients without an existing chatbot.

09 / Results

First two months post go-live (Jan–Feb 2026).

51.85%

Open rate · ~2x online-education benchmark (25-35%)

SFMC reporting, UTN BA · Jan–Feb 2026

1.65M

Emails sent · zero downtime

SFMC reporting, UTN BA · Jan–Feb 2026

11.77%

CTOR · in line with benchmark (~13%)

SFMC reporting, UTN BA · Jan–Feb 2026

0.73%

Bounce rate · below benchmark (~1.5%)

SFMC reporting, UTN BA · Jan–Feb 2026

0.48%

Unsubscribe · below benchmark (~0.5%)

SFMC reporting, UTN BA · Jan–Feb 2026

In their words

We had the chatbot, the CRM and the data, but we were missing the layer that could integrate them with our lead communications in a relevant way. Cleon designed the architecture that connects our sales funnel with personalized, generative emails for each lead — and today we converse at scale with metrics that lead the market.

Joana Scaminacci

Marketing & Strategic Alliances Manager · Centro de e-Learning UTN BA

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