TORONTO and Alexandria, VA – January 12, 2022 – Modern Campus, the leading learner engagement platform, today announced the acquisition of Signal Vine, the higher education industry’s most impactful conversational text-messaging platform. The addition of Signal Vine to Modern Campus will enable more institutions to drive measurable gains in enrollment and retention while collecting actionable data to further drive student success. The acquisition expands Modern Campus’s customer base to more than 1,700 colleges and universities across North America, and enables each institution to serve their students with a highly personalized experience throughout the learner-to-earner journey. 

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Lightning Partners served as the exclusive financial advisor to Signal Vine on the transaction.

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Text messaging is a must-have communication solution for every school, and many struggle with delivering high-touch engagement at scale. Signal Vine solves that. Signal Vine is the only conversational text-messaging solution for higher education that allows for high-touch engagement at scale. Its Blended Messaging® approach provides colleges and universities with a personalized texting solution to effectively engage students with messaging that is: 

• One-to-one: Personalized, conversational text messaging to students from their institution, tailored to elicit response from a specific student. 

• Data-driven: Easily integrated with data from core campus systems to drive relevance and create urgency. 

• Event-triggered: Enables instant communication based on a specific event or action, with no staff work needed. 

• AI-optimized: Analyzes messages to identify and respond to common questions and responses, increasing staff efficiency. 
   

“Student engagement is the number one predictor of learner success, full stop. Institutions that understand this, and take steps to improve engagement at every stages of the student lifecycle, are leading the transformation of higher ed,” said Brian Kibby, Chief Executive Officer of Modern Campus. “That’s what’s so exciting about Signal Vine, they make personalized, conversational messaging easier, and are as laser focused on driving learner outcomes as we are. It’s a perfect fit for Modern Campus.” 

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Signal Vine is highly complementary with the Modern Campus engagement platform. In addition to offering it as a standalone conversational text-messaging solution, Modern Campus will integrate Signal Vine across its family of products, providing customers with even deeper engagement strategies to meet the needs of modern learners. 

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“This is an exciting milestone for Signal Vine. We’ve rapidly grown adoption across higher ed institutions because of our commitment to their success,” said Brian Kathman, Chief Executive Officer of Signal Vine. “And in Modern Campus, we found the perfect partner. Their commitment to customer success, student engagement, personalization – not to mention the strong cultural fit for our team – means this is equally exciting for our customers and employees.” 

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“Signal Vine is a match made in heaven for Modern Campus,” said Stephen Rice, Principal at The Riverside Company, the equity partner for Modern Campus. “This addition further illustrates how deeply the company cares about leading the transformation facing higher ed institutions, and how deeply The Riverside Company cares about fueling that transformation. I can’t wait to see what they accomplish together.”  

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This transaction marks the fourth acquisition by Modern Campus in the past year; the company acquired interactive campus map and virtual tour provider nuCloud in early 2021, followed by academic catalog and curriculum management provider DIGARC, and student engagement and development leader Presence. 

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Signal Vine employees will join Modern Campus, adding to a higher education powerhouse of exceptional industry talent. Brian Kibby will remain CEO of Modern Campus. 

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About Modern Campus  

Modern Campus is obsessed with empowering its 1,700+ higher education customers to thrive when radical transformation is required to respond to lower student enrollments and revenue, rising costs, crushing student debt and administrative complexity. 

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The Modern Campus engagement platform powers solutions for non-traditional student management, web content management, catalog and curriculum management, student engagement & development, career pathways, and campus maps & virtual tours. The result: innovative institutions can create a Learner-to-Earner Lifecycle that engages modern learners for life, while providing modern administrators with the tools needed to streamline workflows and drive high efficiency. 

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Learn how Modern Campus is leading the modern learner engagement movement at moderncampus.com and follow us on LinkedIn. 

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About Signal Vine 

Signal Vine is the leading higher education AI messaging platform transforming how higher education institutions reach, support and engage students throughout their academic life cycles. With more than 50 million student interactions, Signal Vine’s Blended Messaging® personalizes engagement using AI, workflow automation and one-to-one messaging to keep students on the path to success. Signal Vine has been improving enrollment and retention outcomes with a proactive approach across the entire campus and student life cycle. 

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To learn more, visit signalvine.com or view a demo: signalvine.com/text-messaging-platform. 

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About Lightning Partners

Lightning Partners provides direction and advice to growth technology companies and their Boards of Directors on M&A, capital raising and strategy that drive significant shareholder value. The firm consistently and tenaciously delivers optimum results for entrepreneurs, growth companies and their investors, including industry leading valuations, transaction terms and close rates. For more information, visit www.lightningpartners.com.

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Contact

info@lightningpartners.com

 

 

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