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."
- What's on which plan. Pro runs the event itself: the listing, online RSVPs, the RSVP list, attendance, and the automatic reminder families receive two days before. The broadcasts in this playbook — the invitation, the day-before message and the post-event follow-up — are Premium. On Pro, reach those families through your own channels.
- 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. An invitation to an event families haven't registered for yet is news, so it goes to the families who asked for your news.
- Recipients: Families who asked for your news. Families who
inquired or toured in the past but never said yes to your news
won't receive it — your school page,
/open-housesand your own channels (week −3) reach them - 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 sends
land while parents are least likely to be reading email, and a
Tuesday morning consistently gets you a better hearing.
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 news broadcast reaches families who asked for your news, and the
event's listing on your school page and on /open-houses reaches
families browsing the platform; 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.
Every RSVP already receives an automatic reminder two days before,
with the date, the time and an add-to-calendar link. The day-before
message with the practical details is yours to write (Premium), from
the event itself: on the event card, click "Message RSVPs." The
composer opens locked to this event's attendees only (recipient type
open_house_event). Write the reminder, send.
It goes out as an update: everyone who RSVP'd receives it, whether or not they asked for your news, and the email tells them it's because they registered for your open day. Keep it about the event.
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"
An RSVP made three weeks ago is a soft commitment; the reminder is what converts it into an attendance. 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 is what makes your follow-up target attendees rather than everyone who RSVP'd
- 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. The event fills the top of your funnel; the week that follows is what decides whether any of it converts. Skip it and you have hosted a nice morning.
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. It can be sent until 7 days after the event, so this follow-up can't slip into week +2.
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.
What to measure
Run the same three numbers after every event and compare each one against your own last event, not against an external target — your catchment, your selectivity and your calendar slot all move these far more than any general figure would suggest:
- Show-rate — attended ÷ RSVP'd. Tells you whether your reminder and confirmation emails are doing their job.
- Tour-conversion — booked a tour ÷ attended, within two weeks of the event. This is the one that responds most to follow-up discipline, and the one worth improving first.
- Application-conversion — applied ÷ attended, across the cycle. Slower to read, and heavily shaped by how selective you are.
Two events in and you have a baseline that means something, because it is yours. When a number drops, the gap is almost always in follow-up rather than 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. The single cheapest way to lose attendees you had already won. 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
One operational gap you should be aware of:
- No QR-code check-in. Day-of attendance is paper-list + manual ticking back in the dashboard. Works fine for events under 100 attendees.
It doesn't block the workflow, but it 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
We respond within 2 business days.