About Norwalk Community College
4,000+
students
45%
Hispanic and Latinx students
67%
part-time students
Message has played a significant role in allowing us to communicate beneficial and timely information to our students through an easy-to-use texting platform! We are able to personalize our text messages to students and engage with them in a way where they feel supported and able to ask for help whenever they need it.
Karla LaraStudent Success CoachThe Challenge
NCC was looking at ways to increase retention and graduation through a comprehensive advising system, serving students from initial admission through to degree completion. They wanted to develop the program using grant money from Developing Hispanic-Serving Institutions (DHSI), a Title V program.
To get started, the Title V team partnered with student retention specialists, admissions and the college’s foundation. The goal was to increase enrollment among students who applied to NCC.
The Search for a Two-Way Messaging Tool
Suzanne Lyons, the Title V coordinator, evaluated several vendors before deciding on Modern Campus Message. Lyons and her colleagues found that Message was the superior option for its timeliness, personalization and the ability to leverage existing data. They also appreciated that Message was specifically developed for higher education, allows message branching, and facilitates ongoing engagement instead of one-time mass communication.
In the fall of 2017, NCC conducted a texting pilot program to 300 prospective students and standard communications to another group of prospective students. The program included weekly messages to address placement exams, FAFSA, transcripts and immunizations, and registration.
The Rewarding Results
NCC conducted its pilot program in fall 2017. Staff texted more than 200 prospective students, while communicating with around the same number of students solely via more traditional methods—email, post mail and phone calls—to serve as a control group. The content communicated to each group was the same; all students received weekly messages about placement exams, FAFSA, transcripts, immunizations and registration.
NCC saw a student engagement rate of 77% with Message. In other words, more than three out of four prospective students who received text messages replied! Additionally, students who received texts enrolled in NCC at a 31% higher rate than their peers who only received other forms of communication.
Discover additional ways you can use text messaging to connect with prospective students and increase enrollment in our free guide:
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About Modern Campus
Modern Campus empowers 1,700+ higher education institutions to attract, engage, and retain learners for life with software solutions that enable a modern student experience.
The Modern Campus learner-to-earner lifecycle platform powers solutions for web content management, conversational text messaging, catalog and curriculum management, career pathways, student engagement and development, and non-traditional student management. The result: innovative institutions engage their modern learners for life, while providing modern administrators with the tools needed to streamline workflows and drive high efficiency.
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