About Norwalk Community College
4,000+
students
45%
Hispanic and Latinx students
67%
part-time students
Signal Vine 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 Coach
The 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 Signal Vine. Lyons and her colleagues found that Signal Vine was the superior option for its timeliness, personalization and the ability to leverage existing data. They also appreciated that Signal Vine 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 Signal Vine. 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.
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About Modern Campus
Modern Campus is obsessed with empowering its 1,200+ higher education customers to thrive when radical transformation is required to respond to lower student enrollments and revenue, rising costs, crushing student debt and even school closures.
Powered by Omni CMS, DIGARC, Presence, Signal Vine and Destiny One, the Modern Campus modern learner engagement platform enables innovative institutions to create a “learner to earner” lifecycle that engages modern learners for life.
Delivering massive personalization, AI-driven recommendations and a modern e-commerce engine, Modern Campus creates a student-first digital experience and removes silos across campus. Presidents and provosts, marketing and IT teams, admissions, registrars, student affairs and CE divisions can partner to attract, enroll, empower, retain, credential and re-engage students with pathways for lifelong learning.
Learn how Modern Campus is leading the modern learner engagement movement at moderncampus.com and follow us on LinkedIn.