How Montana Turned Every Prospect Into a Conversation (Not a Number)

By 2019, the University of Montana was facing a harsh truth: undergraduate enrollment had fallen significantly in less than a decade. The old playbook—mass emails, vendor “solutions” and name buys—wasn’t just failing; it was wasting time the university didn’t have.

When Jenny Petty took the reins of marketing in 2020, she didn’t inherit a marketing system — she inherited a blank slate. “I secret-shopped my own institution,” she said. “I put my name in an inquiry form and got one email. That was it.”

The university’s digital ecosystem was fractured. The website wasn’t generating leads. Personalization didn’t exist. And the brand — rooted in edgy, student-driven research — didn’t fit the “safe” templates that big vendors tried to sell back to them.

“Our brand had attitude,” Petty said. “The big vendors didn’t know what to do with that.”

So Montana stopped trying to fix the old system. It built a new one, and Halda became the backbone.

The Challenge

Montana’s marketing and enrollment teams needed to move fast with limited staff and limited time. The goals were simple but ambitious:

• Rebuild from scratch: Create a digital-first enrollment engine that actually worked.
• Do more with less: The marketing and IT partnership had just one shared developer, so any tool had to be intuitive, flexible and quick to deploy.
• Personalize at scale: “In higher ed, when we talk about personalization, it’s often just geographic,” Petty said. “But it’s not truly getting to what a student is interested in. That was one of the first things that really piqued our interest.”

The Solution

Petty first discovered Halda through a conversation with CEO Lance Hydrick. “He started talking, and I basically made him demo it on the spot,” she said with a laugh. “Within minutes, I knew: this is what next-generation lead gen looks like. Higher ed hasn’t even scratched the surface.”

Halda’s AI Website Conversion Agent became Montana’s test bed for innovation — a smarter, faster, more human approach to enrollment marketing.

• Intelligent forms, better leads: Halda’s progressive profiling forms adapt in real time, learning from each student’s behavior to deliver individualized experiences instead of static forms.
• Lightning-fast implementation: “From the first conversation to implementation, it couldn’t have been more than a month or two,” Petty said. “That speed is unheard of in higher ed.”
• Built for feedback: “We’d say, ‘Hey, have you thought about this?’ and a week later you’d come back and say, ‘We built it for you.’ That’s pretty awesome,” she said. “You’re moving at the speed of a startup but keeping the core product stable — and you don’t see that very often.”

The impact reached beyond marketing. Montana’s CIO — a self-described “AI enthusiast” — became an early internal advocate. Even the university president stayed in the loop, recognizing that innovation in enrollment wasn’t optional; it was survival.

“Most vendors sell tools,” Petty said. “Halda acts like a partner — fast, responsive and willing to build alongside us.”

The Results

Halda delivered measurable, rapid impact:

• 216% higher conversion rate on inquiry landing pages compared with Montana’s standard CRM pages.
• 222% increase in inquiry volume after switching from a traditional RFI to a Halda form
• Mid-cycle launch, instant impact — with live deployment in under eight weeks.
• Real cultural shift — proving higher ed can move fast without breaking everything.
  
  

“With the right urgency — which everyone should have right now — you can get really powerful things done quickly,” Petty said.

Another unexpected qualitative result: Montana’s team felt like they were finally operating at the edge of what’s possible.

“It’s not very often when you’re working in higher ed that you feel like you are on the edge of what’s new and different,” Petty said. “Working with Halda, I always feel that.”

Conclusion

The University of Montana didn’t need another vendor. It needed a new strategy — and a partner unafraid to challenge outdated assumptions about how higher ed connects with students.

Halda helped Montana rebuild faster, personalize smarter and reconnect with students on their own terms.

“Halda delivers next-gen tech with next-level heart,” Petty said. “You can’t fake caring about this work, and Halda doesn’t try.”