This is the playbook we'd run if we were operating a single open house — from creating the event through to converting attendees into tour bookings and applications two weeks later.
The arc is roughly 6 weeks: 4 weeks of preparation + 2 weeks of follow-up. The dates below assume a Saturday morning event (the most common format for boarding schools); shift the timeline if your event is mid-week evening.
Three things to know before starting:
- The open house is the front of the funnel, not the conversion event. Conversion happens in the 1:1 tour or application that follows. Plan accordingly — every operational decision should be in service of "what makes attendees more likely to book a tour after."
- All open-house operations are Premium-tier. Pro can list the event as content but can't collect RSVPs or run the post-event broadcast. If you're on Pro and want to run open houses operationally, upgrade or run the RSVP collection externally.
- The full feature reference for each step lives in Running an open house — this playbook is the calendar; the deep-dive is the field guide.
Week −4: Create the event
Dashboard → Open Houses → Add Open House.
Fill in:
- Date + start/end time — a 2-hour window is the sweet spot (90 min of programming + 30 min of mingling and goodbyes)
- Description — what to expect, address + parking, who they'll meet, whether siblings are welcome, dress code, RSVP-required note. Translate or let auto-translate handle French / German / Italian
- Capacity — optional. Set it if you have a real cap (gym fits 80; tour guides cap at 60). Leave blank for unlimited
Click Save. The event is now live on your public profile and on
the platform-wide /open-houses page.
Verify in incognito: open your school page in a private tab, confirm the event shows up correctly and the RSVP button works. Send a test RSVP from a personal email. Delete the test RSVP afterwards.
Week −4: The invitation broadcast (schedule now, send Monday)
Compose your invitation broadcast.
- Recipients: All inquiries filtered to "inquired in the past 18 months" — that's families warm enough to want to come. Add All bookings if you want past tour-takers reminded too
- Subject: "[School name] Open House — Saturday March 15"
- Content: one paragraph: date, time, brief sell ("meet the head, tour the boarding houses, see classes in session"), the apply-by date if you're in admissions cycle, RSVP link
- Action link: the URL of your
/open-houseslisting or your school's public profile open-house section
Schedule for the Monday of week −3 via scheduled_for on the
composer. Don't fire it now — Friday-afternoon and weekend
broadcasts see ~30% lower open rates than Tuesday-morning sends.
Week −3: Public distribution
The scheduled broadcast goes out Monday morning. RSVPs will start landing in your dashboard within hours.
This week, push the event to channels the platform doesn't cover:
- Your school website — pin the event date to the homepage
- Social media — single post on each channel you use
- School newsletter — if you have a parent comms newsletter, one line + link
- Word of mouth — brief current parents at the school gates; they often refer friends
The platform broadcast handles families who already know you; this week is about reaching the wider catchment.
Week −2: Capacity check and team brief
Mid-cycle pause. Two things:
- Check your RSVP count. Click the interest-count badge on the event card to see the list. If you set capacity, you'll see "X / Y interested" — adjust expectations or open a second slot if you're approaching the cap
- Brief your team. 30-minute meeting with everyone who's
working the event:
- Who's at the welcome desk
- Who's giving each tour (split by primary / secondary / boarding)
- Who's on parent questions
- Who's handling the head-of-school slot
- Backup plan if attendance is wildly off projections
Document the brief in a shared doc; the day-of will move fast.
Week −1: The day-before broadcast
Send a reminder to RSVPs the day before the event.
This is the moment where the platform doesn't have an auto-cron yet — you have to fire this manually. Two ways:
- Per-event broadcast (recommended): on the event card, click "Message RSVPs." The composer opens locked to this event's attendees only. Write the reminder, send.
- Manual broadcasts with a
open_house_eventrecipient type selected — same effect, slightly more clicks.
Content for the day-before email:
- Confirmation: "see you tomorrow at 10am"
- Practical details: parking instructions, gate code, what to bring (usually nothing), what to wear (smart casual)
- The name + role of the person greeting them at the door
- A direct phone number for if-you're-running-late
- Brief: "the event runs until 12, plan ~2 hours"
Reminders move show-rate from ~50% to 75-85%. Worth the 10 minutes to compose.
The day of: execution + check-in
Pre-event (30 minutes before):
- Print the RSVP list (export CSV from the RSVP dialog)
- Distribute to greeters
- Confirm staff are in position
- Set up signage
During the event:
- Greeters mark attendance on the printed list as families arrive (pen on paper is fine)
- If a walk-in shows up not on the list, capture their name + email manually so you can add them to the system later
Within 24 hours of the event:
- Open the RSVP dialog and tick the "attended" checkbox for each family who showed. This data drives your show-rate analytics and your follow-up targeting
- Add any walk-ins as new inquiries via the inquiries tab (status: Contacted, source: "Open house walk-in")
Week +1: The follow-up
This is where the open house actually pays off. Schools that don't do follow-up consistently see 5-10% of attendees convert to tours; schools with disciplined follow-up see 20-30%.
The mass follow-up
Click the open house card (now in Past Events) → "Draft follow-up" button. The composer opens locked to this event's RSVPs.
Write a personal-feeling thank-you:
- Acknowledge the event by name + date
- One specific moment ("we hope you enjoyed the boarding house tour with Mrs. Chen")
- Next-step CTA: "Book a 1:1 tour" with the link, or "Start your application" if you're in admissions cycle
- Sign off from a specific person (head of admissions), not the school in the abstract
Send Tuesday morning of week +1 — Monday is inbox-clearing day for most parents; Tuesday gets seen.
The personal follow-up
For your highest-priority attendees (siblings of current students, families who specifically asked about scholarships, families that flew in to attend), send individual CRM messages within 48 hours of the event. The mass follow-up is fine for most; the personal follow-up is what closes the high-value ones.
To identify them: filter your inquiries tab to families who RSVP'd to this open house (you'll have to cross-reference manually right now — the inquiries tab doesn't filter by open-house yet).
Week +2: Conversion check
Two weeks after the event, run the conversion check:
- Of the X attendees, how many have booked a tour since the event? (Filter bookings tab by date created)
- How many have started an application? (Admissions tab, filter by created since event date)
- Of the families who attended but haven't done either — what's blocking them? Common: waiting for decision, comparing schools, budget conversation with extended family
For families stuck at the "considering" stage, a single personal follow-up call from the head of admissions (not another email) often resolves the block.
Conversion benchmarks
From the data we have across schools running open houses on the platform:
- Show-rate (attended / RSVP'd): 50% baseline → 75-85% with day-before reminder
- Tour-conversion (booked tour / attended): 15-30% within 2 weeks of event, depending on follow-up discipline
- Application-conversion (applied / attended): 5-15% within the cycle, varies by school's selectivity
If you're significantly below these, the gap is almost always in follow-up, not in the event itself.
Common cycle mistakes
- Treating the open house as the conversion event. It's first contact. The conversion is the tour or application that follows. Don't measure success by attendance count alone.
- Skipping the day-before reminder. Schools that "forget" this lose 15-25 percentage points of show-rate. Set a recurring calendar reminder for yourself if you have to.
- Mass follow-up only. The mass thank-you covers the 80%; the personal follow-up converts the 20% that matter most. Both are needed.
- Not marking attendance. Without attendance data, your follow-up targets EVERYONE who RSVP'd — including no-shows. No-shows often weren't actually serious; targeting them pollutes your funnel.
- Running the open house in isolation. Open houses work best as part of a cycle — back-to-back with admissions season, with the broadcasts/CRM/applications layers reinforcing each other. See Launching admissions season for the cycle-level playbook.
What the platform doesn't have yet
Two operational gaps you should be aware of:
- No auto-reminder cron for open-house RSVPs. The day-before reminder is manual (see week −1 above). We'll close this when multiple schools tell us it's a daily pain.
- No QR-code check-in. Day-of attendance is paper-list + manual ticking back in the dashboard. Works fine for events under 100 attendees.
Neither blocks the workflow; both would be nice. If your school runs 5+ open houses a year and the manual work adds up, email us and we'll prioritise.
When to escalate to us
Email admin@swissprivate-schools.ch if:
- A family insists they RSVP'd but you don't see them — we can check the submission log
- You want a large event (200+ RSVPs) with custom check-in tooling — we can build a one-off check-in page for that event
- You need to send a per-event broadcast to RSVPs across MULTIPLE events (e.g. "thank you to everyone who attended any of our March events") — current per-event broadcast is single-event only; we can run the multi-event send server-side
We respond within 2 business days.