The Harvard Crimson Used Gmelius to Increase Lead Response by 3X

Founded in 1873, The Harvard Crimson is the nation's oldest continuously published daily college newspaper. Operating as a proudly independent, entirely student-run media enterprise, it relies on robust internal and external networking to thrive.

Ben Morrison, Director of Staff Development at The Harvard Crimson, oversees crucial outreach efforts necessary to drive the organization's growth, partnerships, and engagement.

His primary goal was to rapidly scale their lead generation and internal outreach to bolster their pipeline. However, the organization hit a roadblock. Their outreach strategy was severely limited by manual processes. Ben wanted to ramp up communication, but a lack of sophisticated tooling meant these ambitious goals were stifled by operational friction.

The Problem

The Harvard Crimson faced:

1. Manual bottleneck at scale

The ambition to drastically grow their lead base was constantly bottlenecked by the sheer physical limits of manual email management. The team needed to engage a significantly larger audience, but their existing workflow was simply not equipped for high-volume, personalized outreach.

2. No automated or batched email capabilities

Crafting, scheduling, and meticulously following up on individual messages absorbed an immense amount of time, pulling the team's focus away from higher-level strategic initiatives. "Sending the volume of outreach I wanted was difficult without automation and batched-sending," explained Morrison.

3. Missed opportunities from manual follow-ups

Without the ability to systematize highly repetitive tasks, the team was forced to manually manage every single follow-up, resulting in missed opportunities, forgotten leads, and an agonizingly slow conversion cycle.

4. No infrastructure for drip campaigns

They lacked the underlying infrastructure necessary to execute complex drip campaigns or automatically nudge unresponsive prospects. Their growth was artificially capped by outdated administrative hurdles, and breaking through required a comprehensive, scalable solution.

The Answer

Our specialized implementation and onboarding team guided Ben and his team at every step:

• Adopted Gmelius's Email Outbound Suite and Automation Rules to completely overhaul their communication strategy. Morrison called the platform "a mass email sender that can template and schedule outreach campaigns."

• Transformed outreach with Sequences: Gmelius's Sequences feature allowed Ben to turn a cumbersome, manual email process into a streamlined, automated machine. The team could easily build multi-stage, highly personalized email drip campaigns directly within their existing inbox interface.

• Automated follow-ups triggered by behavior: The team could seamlessly schedule initial outreach and set up automated follow-ups — or "pain-free bumps" — that would reliably trigger based on recipient behavior.

• Systemized the entire pipeline with Automation Rules: Gmelius's powerful automation rules let the team automatically route incoming emails, assign specific labels, and trigger outbound sequences based on predetermined logic and SLAs, completely removing the guesswork from lead management.

• Combined sequences with dynamic logic: By pairing the automated cadences of sequences with the "if-this-then-that" logic of their automation rules, Gmelius empowered The Harvard Crimson to execute sophisticated, high-volume campaigns efficiently.

The Results

The implementation of Gmelius yielded immediate and dramatic improvements for The Harvard Crimson's outreach efforts, fundamentally transforming their productivity and lead conversion metrics. By automating the most time-consuming aspects of their daily workflow, the organization achieved staggering efficiency gains across the board.

1. 50x more emails sent in the same time

Automation completely eliminated the manual drafting of repetitive messages. With Gmelius Sequences handling the heavy lifting and batched sending, Ben and his team could deploy campaigns at an unprecedented scale, effectively sending 50 times more emails in the exact same amount of time it previously took to manage a tiny fraction of that volume.

2. 20x more calls per week, up from 5x with previous tool

The sheer volume of highly targeted, automated outreach quickly translated into tangible meetings and conversations. The team saw their weekly scheduled calls skyrocket from a mere 5 per week to 20, representing a massive, quantifiable expansion in active prospect engagement.

3. 3x more responses per month

The quality, timing, and persistence of the automated follow-ups generated significantly higher engagement rates. The ability to seamlessly execute campaigns meant leads were nurtured effectively without manual intervention. As Morrison happily noted, "3x more people have responded to me this month," a clear indicator of the platform's direct impact on audience engagement.

4. Sustainable email campaign growth

Gmelius didn't just provide a temporary spike in numbers; it established a highly scalable foundation. The Harvard Crimson now enjoys more pain-free bumps, more converted leads, and a sustainable model for expanding their outbound campaigns.

5. Savings from not having to add headcount

Perhaps most impressively, these exponential increases in output, responses, and booked calls were achieved without hiring any additional staff. By effectively multiplying the team's output through intelligent automation, Gmelius provided massive organizational cost savings.

Achieve Similar Outcomes for Your Team

Gmelius is an AI-powered email collaboration and automation platform built for Google Workspace. From shared inboxes and automation rules to outbound sequences and advanced analytics, it delivers enterprise-grade solutions that are secure, compliant, and backed by hands-on integration support.

Since Ben's experience, Gmelius has taken the same sequence capabilities his team relied on even further. Email Sequences have evolved into the AI Automation Architect: a next-generation engine that lets users define granular, condition-based workflows powered by Gmelius AI. 

Instead of building static drip campaigns, teams can now set intelligent triggers like sending a follow-up three days after a reply, escalating after two days of no response, or detecting purchase intent within an email's content and automatically routing that lead into a tailored cadence. It's the kind of contextual, adaptive outreach that Ben's team was building toward, now available out of the box.

Alongside the AI Automation Architect, the latest generation of Gmelius introduces Meli, an AI executive assistant that brings intelligent inbox management and automation to a new level — helping teams do more with every email, every day. 

If Ben's results look like the outcomes your team needs, explore what Gmelius can do.