An Open House is a scheduled event where many families visit your school at the same time — Saturday-morning admissions sessions for boarding schools, mid-week evening info sessions for day schools, end-of-summer "meet the school" events before term starts.
The platform's open-house feature handles the discovery + RSVP layer: a public listing where prospective families can find your event and register interest. The on-the-day execution (welcomes, tours, check-in, follow-up) is handled outside the dashboard — the in-app tooling is intentionally minimal.
This article covers what's in the product, where the boundaries are, and the operational rhythms that work for schools running 2-4 open houses per year.
Open House vs. tour booking
| | Open House | Tour booking |
|---|---|---|
| Audience | Many families, one event | One family, one slot |
| Format | Group event, scheduled date/time | 1:1 visit, family picks from your calendar |
| Discovery | Listed publicly on /open-houses and your school page | Bookable from your school page when families inquire |
| RSVP | Lightweight expression of interest | Full booking with status (pending → confirmed) |
| Best for | Major events: open-house weekends, admissions cycles, term-start meetings | Day-to-day family visits |
Both surfaces exist. Schools that run open houses well typically also do 1:1 follow-up tours with serious families afterwards — the open house is the funnel; the tour is the conversion.
Creating an open house
Dashboard → Open Houses section → Add open house.
Fill in:
-
Date — calendar picker
-
Start time + end time — when the event runs
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Description — what families should know. This is where you put address, parking, agenda, what to bring, dress code, whether siblings are welcome, contact for questions. The description is translatable into all four locales (auto- translated by default, or write per-locale manually for high-touch events).
-
Capacity (optional) — a number cap on RSVPs. When set, the dashboard card shows "X / Y interested" and the public listing shows the count toward the cap. Leave blank for unlimited.
There's no title field or event-type tag — the open house is keyed by date + time and described by your text.
Practical implication: for nuance, the description does the work ("by invitation only", "current families: see the parent portal instead").
What families see
Once published, your open house appears in two places:
- Your school profile page — an Open Houses section with the upcoming events for your school, dates + times + descriptions.
- The platform-wide events page at
/open-houses— aggregates upcoming events across all schools. Families browsing the platform discover schools they hadn't considered through this listing.
A family interested in attending clicks "I'm interested" / "RSVP." This adds a row to your RSVP list with either their account info (if they're signed in) or just their email (if they're anonymous). No detailed RSVP form — name + email is the entire data capture.
If you need more (number of attendees, kids' ages, dietary restrictions), collect it offline after the RSVP via a Google Form or by replying to the RSVP confirmation. See "Operational rhythms that work" below.
The RSVP list
Click into any open house in your dashboard to see the list of RSVPs:
- Email address (always)
- Account name + photo (if they were logged in when RSVP'ing)
- Timestamp
You can sort, export to CSV, and use the CSV outside the platform for whatever you'd normally do — print name tags, plan seating, share with greeters, build an attendee spreadsheet.
You can send a broadcast directly to one event's RSVPs. Each upcoming open house card (with at least one RSVP) has a "Message RSVPs" button. Click it, the broadcast composer opens locked to this event's attendees — write your message, hit send. It goes out as an update: no news sign-up is needed, and the email tells each family they're receiving it because they registered for your open day. That's also why it has to stay about this event. Useful for:
- "Reminder: tomorrow's open house starts at 10am, here's parking"
- "We've added a guided tour at 11:30 — RSVP again if you want a spot"
- "Weather update — the event is still on, but bring an umbrella"
An event's RSVPs can be messaged until 7 days after it. To invite families to your next open house, send news to the families who asked for it — see Sending effective broadcasts.
Messaging an event's RSVPs — "Message RSVPs" here and "Draft follow-up" below — is a Premium feature, because each message is a broadcast. Everything before it is on Pro too: families RSVP online, you get the RSVP list and mark attendance, and each family receives a confirmation when they register and an automatic reminder two days before the event.
Attendance tracking. Click on the interest-count badge of any event to open the RSVP list. Each row has a checkbox — tick it on the day or shortly after to mark attendance. The card shows the "X attended" count once you've started ticking, which is what your post-event analytics will use.
Post-event follow-up. Past events get a "Draft follow-up" button that opens the broadcast composer locked to that event's RSVPs. Write your thank-you, hit send — within 7 days of the event, after which its RSVPs can no longer be messaged. No automatic 24h sends — schools want to personalise the follow-up, not have it auto-fire with stale templated copy.
What the dashboard still doesn't have (small remaining gaps):
- QR codes for self-service family check-in
- A mobile-optimised check-in screen (the RSVP list is desktop- friendly; mobile schools handle attendance from the CSV export)
Operational rhythms that work
After watching schools run open houses on the platform, the rhythms that result in well-attended events with strong post-event follow-up:
Two weeks before
- Create the open-house entry with full description (address, parking, agenda)
- Send a news broadcast to "Families who asked for your news", with
the open house date + a link back to your school's open-house
listing. Everyone else finds the event on your school page and
on
/open-houses - Add to your school newsletter / Instagram / WhatsApp groups
One week before
- Check the RSVP list — note who's coming
- Send a personalized email to the families you most want to attend (use the CRM thread, not a broadcast — it's 1:1 outreach)
- Confirm staffing internally: who's at the welcome desk, who's giving tours, who's answering specific questions
24 hours before
- Final RSVP count → tells your catering / seating / handouts plan
- Send the day-before reminder with the event card's "Message RSVPs" button — it goes to this event's RSVPs only
The day of
- Print the RSVP CSV; use it as the check-in sheet at the welcome desk. Pen-on-paper check-in works fine for events under 100 families.
- Mark which families showed up on the printed sheet so you can cross-reference with the dashboard later.
Within 48 hours after
- Manually update each attended family in your CRM — change their inquiry status to Contacted if it was New, add an internal note with what you discussed. This is the highest-conversion follow-up window.
- Send a "thanks for coming" message via CRM (per family — feels personal) OR with the past event's "Draft follow-up" button, which reaches everyone who RSVP'd to this event — including attendees who weren't already in your CRM.
Two weeks after
- Convert serious prospects to booked tours. Most families decide in the 1-2 weeks following an open house whether to take it further. If you haven't booked a 1:1 tour or had a follow-up conversation in that window, the lead cools fast.
Common mistakes
- Treating the open house as the conversion event. It's the first contact event. Conversion happens in the follow-up tour or application. If your open house feels well-attended but applications don't follow, the gap is in your follow-up, not the open house itself.
- Not capturing offline RSVPs. Some families call to RSVP rather than clicking a button. Manually add them to the open house from the dashboard so your count is accurate.
- Skipping the description. A bare "Open house, March 15, 10am" entry doesn't tell families whether to attend. Treat the description as a mini event page — address, parking, what-to-expect, RSVP-required-or-not, contact-for-questions.
- Forgetting to translate. If your school operates in French + English, the auto-translate covers most of it but proper nouns (your school's name, specific staff names, building names) can come out awkward. Quick proofread per locale before publishing is worth the 60 seconds.
- Deleting a cancelled event before telling its RSVPs. Deleting an open house removes its RSVP list with it. Send the cancellation with "Message RSVPs" first, then delete the event.
When to escalate to us
Email admin@swissprivate-schools.ch if:
- You're running a large event (200+ RSVPs expected) and want custom check-in tooling — we can build a one-off check-in form for that event
- A family says they RSVP'd but you don't see them — we can check the submission log
We respond within 2 business days.