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PROLOGUE
The number you report on Monday morning is the wrong one.
Your October open house is on the calendar. The student ambassadors are picked, and the head of school has a fifteen-minute slot. Somebody has already asked about the cookies.
On the Monday after, someone will ask how it went, and you will answer with a number. Sixty-two families, up from fifty-one. Everyone nods, and the event gets filed as a success.
Nobody enrolls at an open house. They decide in the two weeks after it, when your school is one of three they toured, and the three tours have started to run together. Sixty-two tells you the invitation worked. It cannot tell you whether any of those families are coming back.
The morning-after problem
Most schools send one thank-you email. It says the same thing to everyone, from an address nobody can reply to. The family who lingered twenty minutes in the lower school library gets the identical note as the family who left after the head's talk. Then the file goes quiet until the application deadline reminder.
I understand why. The week after an open house is the week you spend recovering from it, which is how follow-up ends up missing from the plan. Most plans stop when the last car leaves the parking lot.
Write the follow-up before the event
Three touches, all of which you can draft this week.
A next-day note from a person. It mentions one thing you noticed about them: the question their daughter asked in the science room, or the program they circled on the map. That one detail separates a school that noticed them from a school that scanned their badge. Someone has to capture it during the event, so assign that job this week rather than at the door.
Something useful a week later. The financial aid page in plain language, or a two-minute video of the program they asked about. Send whatever answers the question they did not say out loud. If you asked your new families what nearly stopped them, as issue 307 suggested, you already know what that is.
An invitation to come back for something small. A class visit, or coffee with a current parent. The families who say yes to a second visit are your applicant pool.
When someone asks how the open house went, the answer that matters is how many families came back. That number takes three weeks to show up. Report it anyway.
One quick win
Pull last October's open house sign-in list and count how many of those families are in this year's enrolled class. That is your real open house number.
Which families from last year's open house did you hear from again?
Thanks,
Brendan
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UPCOMING EVENT
For MarCom Society Members Only
Shape and Sharpen Your Marketing: 2 Questions to Ask Your 3 Audiences
It's the perfect time of year to set your school up for the enrollment season to come. Instead of guessing what marketing will resonate, ask two critical questions across three of your key audiences. Their answers will shape and sharpen your marketing strategy for years ahead.
Because it's not marketing if you're not gleaning insights from your market. And that's work AI can't do. But you can. Get your message right, and everything else follows.
In our time together, we'll share these two questions, discuss how to customize them, and cover what to do with the answers. You'll leave with the most valuable anchor tool for an effective marketing strategy.
Bio
With over three decades of experience across large agencies and boutique firms, Barbara has collaborated with clients spanning a wide range of industries. For the last twelve years, she has focused on education, partnering with school leaders to increase community engagement, apply effective market research, and train communities in storytelling strategies — work that drives enrollment, strengthens strategic plans, and deepens trust. That focus reflects something personal: as a proud Loomis Chaffee and Rumsey Hall alumna, Barbara's career has come full circle, branding over 60 independent schools (including higher ed institutions) from coast to coast with expertise forged in the very institutions that shaped her.
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