The world of collegiate athletics thrives on passionate fan engagement, alumni connections, and philanthropic support. For the University of Pittsburgh Athletics department, reaching and nurturing these vital relationships has always been a priority.
In collaboration with the Pitt Cloud Innovation Center (CIC) powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS), the Panthers are revolutionizing how they connect with their fanbase and vast network of supporters through intelligent automation.
The CIC, in partnership with Pitt Athletics, developed a cutting-edge AI-driven SMS engagement system that will transform outreach to and communication with potential ticket buyers, alumni, and philanthropic prospects, maximizing efficiency while maintaining the personal touch that makes Pitt Athletics special.
The Challenge: Limited Impact with Manual Outreach
Traditionally, Pitt Athletics' fan engagement has been constrained by the capacity limitations of their sales team. With a large database of potential leads including fans and alumni, the department struggled to efficiently reach everyone who might be interested in purchasing tickets or making philanthropic contributions.
The existing systems in place provide robust data management but lack the automated outreach capabilities needed to scale engagement efforts effectively.
"We have thousands of potential supporters in our database, but our sales team can only reach so many people manually. We needed a way to automate initial contact and qualification while still maintaining meaningful, personalized interactions."
-Lee Roberts, Executive Associate AD, Philanthropy and Engagement
The department recognized that many warm leads were going uncontacted due to resource constraints, representing missed opportunities for ticket sales and philanthropic engagement.
The Solution: AI-Powered SMS Engagement at Scale
The Cloud Innovation Center student interns Mohammed Misran and Varun Shelke developed the Smart Outreach Hub - an intelligent SMS-based outreach system that will transform how Pitt Athletics connects with their audience.
The solution features a sophisticated AI-powered conversational interface that can automatically reach out to leads, engage them through natural dialogue, and guide them toward purchasing tickets or making philanthropic contributions.
The system is designed to work seamlessly with CSV lead lists, making it easy for the Athletics team to upload contact information and launch targeted campaigns. Using advanced natural language processing, the AI can conduct conversations that don't feel robotic or impersonal.
The Smart Outreach Hub demonstrates the power of serverless architecture for modern engagement platforms. By leveraging AWS CDK for infrastructure as code, the student leads created a fully reproducible deployment that any organization can spin up in minutes.
“The event-driven design automatically scales to handle thousands of concurrent conversations while keeping costs minimal through pay-per-use pricing, and the decoupled architecture means each component scales independently based on actual demand. This approach transformed what could have been a complex, costly infrastructure challenge into an efficient, maintainable solution that grows with the organization’s needs.”
-Varun Shelke, Backend Developer, Pitt CIC
The platform includes automated scheduling integration, allowing interested prospects to book meetings with sales representatives directly through SMS conversation. This streamlined workflow ensures that qualified leads receive immediate attention while freeing up the sales team to focus on high-value interactions.
The Smart Outreach Hub leverages AWS's serverless architecture to ensure cost-effectiveness and automatic scaling. The system is built using services like AWS Lambda for processing, DynamoDB for data storage, and Amazon Bedrock for AI-powered conversations.
Everything is connected through automated workflows that trigger based on lead responses and engagement levels. The system can intelligently determine when to continue automated engagement and when to escalate to human sales representatives, ensuring optimal resource allocation.
"Working closely with Pitt Athletics gave us real insight into how sales teams operate and what they need. We engineered this solution to be adaptable – with a few tweaks to the prompts, any organization can use it to automate outreach while keeping conversations personal. The interesting part was teaching the LLM to truly sound like a sales rep and know when to hand off to a human. AWS gave us the tools to build something that scales effortlessly and can grow with different use cases."
-Mohammed Misran, Backend Developer, Pitt CIC
Beyond Athletics: Broader Applications
While initially focused on athletics engagement, this AI-powered outreach solution has the potential to transform lead engagement across various industries and use cases. The flexible architecture allows for customization of conversation flows, integration with different CRM systems, and adaptation to various outreach scenarios.
The solution's emphasis on natural language processing and intelligent conversation management makes it applicable to any organization seeking to scale personalized outreach while maintaining authentic engagement.
The project represents an exciting step forward in leveraging AI and cloud technology to strengthen the connection between Pitt Athletics and their passionate community of supporters.
Supporting Artifacts
Explore the code and technical documentation and check out a demo of the Smart Outreach Hub in action on GitHub.
