The open house is the highest-leverage event in a charter school’s enrollment calendar. It is also the event that most schools design as a tour and then wonder why it didn’t convert.
I’ve been inside a lot of charter school open houses. The pattern is almost always the same: families walk through the building, the principal gives a passionate speech, everyone gets a folder of materials, and then families go home and either enroll or don’t—with the school having no visibility into which will happen and no system for influencing the outcome.
This is not an event design. It’s a hope.
“An open house is not a tour. It is a conversion event. It has one job: move families from interested to committed. Design it accordingly.”
What a Conversion Event Looks Like
A conversion event is designed backward from the desired outcome. The desired outcome is a family that leaves with an application submitted—or at minimum, a specific appointment to submit one. Every element of the event is designed to move families toward that moment.
Before Families Arrive
Registration is mandatory, not optional. Every family who confirms attendance should receive a specific sequence: a confirmation email the day they register, a reminder with directions and parking information 48 hours before, and a text the morning of. Families who register and don’t receive these touchpoints show up at lower rates. Families who receive them show up at higher rates and arrive warmer.
Prepare your team for the event the way you’d prepare them for a performance. Every person staffing the event should know: what is the story we’re telling tonight, what is the specific ask we’re making, and what do we do when a family says they need to think about it?
The First Five Minutes Matter Most
The first impression—the parking, the signage, the person who greets families at the door—sets the tone for everything that follows. Families are deciding in the first five minutes whether this organization has its act together. A warm, organized, clearly-signed arrival experience communicates competence before a single word is spoken about the academic model.
Design the Journey, Not Just the Content
Most open houses are designed around what the school wants to share. A conversion event is designed around how families make decisions. That means: lead with emotion, not data. Tell the story of a student before you explain the curriculum. Let families hear from a founding family before they hear from the principal. And make the ask specific and concrete before people leave the room.
The specific ask matters. “We’d love to have you as part of our founding community” is not a specific ask. “Applications are open tonight and we can walk you through it right now—it takes about ten minutes” is a specific ask. One of these produces applications. The other produces nodding.
The Follow-Up System
What happens after the open house is as important as the event itself. Within 24 hours, every family who attended should receive a personal email—not a mass email that clearly went to everyone—that references something specific from the evening and makes the next step clear. Families who attended but didn’t submit an application should receive a slightly different version: a specific, warm, low-pressure invitation to take the next step.
Families who attended and submitted an application should receive a “welcome to the founding family” sequence that confirms their commitment and makes them feel like they made a great decision. Buyer’s remorse is real. The follow-up sequence is what prevents it.
The Metrics to Track
- Registration rate vs. attendance rate (if these are far apart, your reminder system needs work)
- Application submission rate on the night of the event
- Application submission rate within 72 hours post-event
- Conversion rate from all open house attendees to enrolled students
If you’re not tracking these, you’re running an event—not a system. Systems produce consistent, improvable results. Events produce unpredictable ones.
I’ve seen schools increase their open house conversion rate by 40% or more through intentional event design and post-event follow-up. The changes are almost never expensive. They’re almost always about intention—being clear about what the event is for and designing every element around that purpose.
Ready to Apply This to Your School?
Every post I write comes from work I’ve done with real schools. If you’re ready to build systems that actually fill classrooms, let’s talk.