Overview
Augustine Institute is the largest Catholic graduate theology school in the United States and operates Formed, a digital platform serving over 5,000 parishes and 1 million+ subscribers with theological education and faith formation resources.
Sector
Professional Services
Team size
450+ students, 15+ faculty, 1M+ subscribers via Formed platform
Location
Florissant, Missouri
Established
2005
Core features
AI-Powered Lead Enrichment & Intelligent Sales Routing
Approach
TrueHorizon AI designed and deployed a dual-agent system purpose-built for real-world sales operations: a Lead Enrichment Agent responsible for ingestion, cleanup, and enrichment, and a Product Segmentation & Sales Outreach Agent responsible for activation and conversion. The system was built as a production-grade stack including HubSpot CRM as the system of record, a dedicated OCR pipeline for PDF ingestion, n8n for deterministic workflow orchestration, Airtable for campaign management and performance tracking, and Slack integrations for real-time lead activity alerts.
Augustine Institute is the largest Catholic graduate theology school in the United States and operates Formed, a digital platform serving over 5,000 parishes and 1 million+ subscribers with theological education and faith formation resources. Founded in 2005, the Institute merged with Lighthouse Catholic Media in 2015 and recently expanded to a 284-acre campus in Florissant, Missouri.
Augustine Institute partnered with TrueHorizon AI through one of our affiliates to develop an advanced AI Agent System focused on transforming their sales and marketing by building an AI-driven outreach and qualification pipeline. The project's primary objective is to demonstrate that AI agents can significantly outperform traditional marketing methods in delivering high-quality leads, accurately segmenting products, and executing personalized outreach, particularly during peak sales seasons.
Augustine Institute operates in a high-volume, high-context sales environment. Leads arrive from many places and require careful qualification. But the underlying systems weren't built for that reality.
Key Challenges:
Lead data fragmented across HubSpot exports, Excel files, and PDF directories
Critical lead information locked inside PDFs requiring OCR
Manual consolidation and deduplication slowing campaign execution
Messaging that must align with Catholic theological and pastoral norms
Limited internal technical bandwidth to build and maintain a custom system
Existing processes unable to demonstrably outperform current conversion benchmarks When data is fragmented, speed drops.
When speed drops, relevance drops. And when relevance drops, conversions follow.
Augustine didn't need more campaigns. They needed a smarter system underneath them.
The goal was clear and uncompromising: Move from manual consolidation and generic outreach to a fully agentic sales engine.
Not just automation. Intelligence.
The system needed to:
Unify all lead data into a single source of truth
Deduplicate records across formats and sources
Segment leads by institutional type (Parish, School, Diocese)
Match each segment to the correct product line
Preserve human-in-the-loop review for high-value engagements
Operate reliably in production
This wasn't about replacing the sales team. It was about giving them only the leads worth their time.
TrueHorizon AI designed and deployed a dual-agent system purpose-built for real-world sales operations.
Lead Enrichment Agent
This agent:
Combines data from HubSpot, Excel lists, and PDF directories
Runs OCR pipelines to extract structured data from PDFs
Deduplicates and normalizes records
Enriches leads with verified contact information using Clay
Identifies institutional type with high confidence
Product Segmentation & Sales Outreach Agent
Responsible for activation and conversion.
This agent:
Matches institution profiles to the correct product fit (Formed, Word of Life: Parish, Word of Life: School)
Executes customized, segment-aware email campaigns
Nurtures prospects based on buyer type and product alignment
Routes lead intelligently for automation or human follow-up
The system was built as a production-grade stack designed for scale and reliability.
Core components included:
HubSpot CRM as the system of record
Dedicated OCR pipeline for PDF ingestion
n8n for deterministic workflow orchestration
Airtable for campaign management and performance tracking
Slack integrations for real-time lead activity alerts
This was not a prototype. It was built to run continuously under real demand.
The project delivered a production-ready system with the following outputs:
Unified Lead Database: Segmented by institution type and product fit
Automated Campaigns: Separate campaigns for each major product line (Formed, Word of Life)
Lead Routing System: Automatically routes leads to a digital self-checkout path or human follow-up for the internal sales team
Performance Visibility: Integrated Airtable dashboard with lead performance data and KPIs, supplemented by Slack alerts for lead activity
Documentation: Comprehensive documentation for ongoing use and internal handoff
What changed wasn't just efficiency. It was clarity.
Sales teams no longer wrestle with spreadsheets and PDFs
Campaigns launch faster and with higher relevance
High-value leads surface immediately
Human effort is reserved for real conversations
Peak sales periods are no longer constrained by manual bottlenecks
This is what AI looks like when it's built for operations, not demos
This project represents an organizational shift from fragmented lead management to a systematic, agent-driven sales engine.
By combining enrichment, segmentation, and outreach into a cohesive AI system, Augustine Institute gained the ability to scale demand generation without sacrificing accuracy, values alignment, or human judgment.
The sales team now spends time converting leads—not preparing them.
That's the difference between automation and leverage.