Industries

The six weeks: running the enrolment campaign day by day

A window is not endured, it is prepared. Most of what decides your year happens before it opens.

Published on 10 July 2026 — Algeria Agency

The article beside this one establishes a fact: your year is decided in six weeks. That is true, and it is a diagnosis — it says the window exists and is shorter than people think.

This article is the campaign itself. It begins two weeks before the window opens, ends a week after it closes, and describes what is done each week, by whom, and in what order.

The principle organising it is simple: in a window, everything ends on the same date. A task started late is not late, it is shortened — which is why almost everything that matters is prepared before the window opens.

We give no conversion rate. The reason is in section 10 and it is about the nature of the trade: a school observes its enrolment once a year, and that does not make a series.

A window is not a season

A season is a period when trade is heavier. A window is something else: a period after which selling is not possible at all. A school does not sell more during enrolment, it sells only then.

The practical consequence reverses the usual logic. In ordinary trade, starting something late gives a result later; here, starting late gives a smaller result, because the end date does not move.

All the tasks in a campaign therefore end at the same place, and what distinguishes them is when they start. A follow-up launched three weeks before closing has three weeks; the same one launched five days before has five days.

This explains an observation every school makes without always drawing the conclusion: effort spent during the window is far less effective than effort spent before it. It is not a question of quality, it is a question of available length.

So the campaign described here starts two weeks before the window opens. What happens there costs almost nothing and represents, in our view, most of the result.

Two weeks before: last year’s list

The first action of the campaign does not concern new prospects. It concerns the people who contacted you last year and did not enrol.

That list exists in every school in some form: a notebook, messages, numbers written down. It is almost never used, because it is perceived as a list of failures.

It is not one. Somebody who asked for information last year and did not enrol had a reason — a price, a date, a move, another choice — and those reasons expire. An adult who could not afford it last year may be able to this year.

The contact happens before the official opening and that is what gives it value: the person learns the information before everybody else, which is a real service and is perceived as one. It fits in three lines and it does not remind them that they did not enrol.

Build that list this year even if you did not have it before: one more column in the reception book, with the name, the number and the course asked about. It is the only asset this campaign produces for the next one.

Week 1: what must be exact before the first announcement

There are five pieces of information a candidate looks for first and almost never finds complete: what is taught, who it is for, when it starts, how long it lasts, and what it costs.

Those five must be exact and published in the same place before the first announcement. Announcing that enrolment is open without them produces a volume of calls, most of which ask those five questions, occupying the line at the moment it matters most.

The price is the one everybody omits, and the neighbouring article gives it a whole section. We add a campaign observation here: a page without a price does not reduce the number of calls, it changes their nature — instead of calling to enrol, people call to ask the price and then hang up.

Dates have to be dates. "September start" is not usable information for a parent organising a year or an adult who has to tell an employer.

Finally, those five must be identical everywhere they appear. A difference between the poster, the page and what the person on the phone says is a far stronger signal than the content itself.

The first call: two different people

The neighbouring article says it and it has to be operationalised: a parent and an adult retraining are not looking for the same thing, and they call the same number.

The parent asks about the frame: hours, the journey, supervision, class size, and what happens if their child falls behind. Price comes up in the conversation, rarely first.

The adult asks about the outcome and the cost, in either order depending on the case: what it lets you do afterwards, what it costs, and above all whether the hours are compatible with a job. The hours question is decisive for them and incidental for the other.

So two prepared answers are needed rather than one, and the first sentence of the call has to establish which. "Is this for you or for your child?" is an ordinary question that steers the whole conversation and saves two minutes on every call.

Those two answers are written once, before the opening, and kept by the phone. During the window, whoever answers has no time to construct a reply: they read or they improvise, and improvisation varies from call to call.

Pre-registration: what it commits

Pre-registration is a useful device and often badly set up. It exists to turn an intention into a trace, and it should be designed around that one function.

What it contains is minimal: the name, a number, the course, and the date. Adding documents at this stage turns a two-minute action into a file, and a file gets put off.

What it commits has to be said clearly in the same sentence: it does not hold a place, or it holds one for so many days. Both are defensible; what is not is vagueness, because it produces a conflict at closing when places are short.

Its main value is not commercial but logistical: it gives you, two weeks before closing, an estimate of how many groups to open. Nothing else supplies that information in time.

It has to be as easy by message as in person. A significant share of your candidates will write rather than travel, and requiring a visit for a pre-registration amounts to deleting half of them.

The follow-up cadence during the window

Somebody who asked for information and did not enrol has not said no. In a window they have usually just put it off — and "later" ends at closing.

The cadence that works is short and bounded: a contact three or four days after the enquiry, a second ten days before closing, and a last one two days before. Three contacts, no more, each with different content.

The first supplies information they did not ask for: the detailed calendar, what to bring, the exact hours. It asks for nothing, which is what makes it acceptable.

The second names the deadline without dramatising it: enrolment closes on such a date, here is what remains to be done if you want a place. It produces the most enrolments and it is very often missing.

The third is short and practical: the date, the office hours, what to bring. No manufactured urgency and no invented limited places — that last is explicitly barred by this house’s rules and it turns on you in a market where families talk to each other.

The desk during the window: one person, one book

For six weeks your establishment has two activities: teaching and enrolling. The second needs a place, a person and hours, or it is done by everybody, badly, between classes.

The place matters more than people think. A candidate who enrols standing in a corridor while another conversation goes on beside them forms an opinion of the establishment that has nothing to do with the quality of the teaching.

The person should be the same one as far as possible. Within a week they acquire a real competence — the answers, the odd cases, the paperwork — and that competence is lost entirely if three people take turns.

The book is this campaign’s second document, after last year’s list, and it is the same thing: everybody who calls or comes in, with a name, a number, the course asked about, and a box for what was done. It is also the book that any automation of the window has to hand back to the office each evening, without which the handover to a person is only an invisible queue.

Office hours must include at least one slot when a working adult can come. It is a two-line decision that decides access for an entire population, and many establishments have settled it the wrong way without noticing.

Payment: say it before you are asked

Instalments come up in almost every conversation, and when they come up is the problem: they come up at the end, when the person is already backing out.

Saying it earlier changes the conversation. If instalments exist, they belong among week 1’s five pieces of information; if they do not, say that too, because the person will find out anyway and would rather find out before hoping.

The terms must be written and identical for everybody. An arrangement decided case by case in an office produces, in a town where families know each other, exactly the problem you are imagining.

What is done honestly is a simple grid: what is paid at enrolment, the later instalments, and what happens if somebody stops mid-year. The third is what nobody writes and what produces every dispute.

We will not say what instalment plan to run: it depends on your cash flow and fixed costs, which we do not know. What we say is that the rule must exist, be written, and be the same for everybody.

The week everything arrives at once

Every window has one week — almost always the last — in which half the enrolments happen. It is predictable, it repeats every year, and it is almost always endured.

It is endured because it is treated as a surprise. The same people hold the desk, with the same opening hours, while the volume has tripled.

What can be prepared is modest and is decided in week 1: a second person trained for that week, extended hours announced in advance, and a separate queue for anybody who pre-registered.

The last is the most effective of the three. A pre-registration that gets you through faster in the final week is a real reason to do one, which raises the number of them, which improves your forecast of groups. All three effects are linked.

Finally, decide what you do when a group fills. The answer "we will open a second group if enough people come" needs a threshold and a date, or it is given to fifteen people who will wait for a reply nobody has planned to give.

After closing: the two lists that are worth next year

The week after closing is the most neglected part of the campaign and the most profitable, because it is the only one where the information is still fresh.

Two lists are built in an hour. The first: the people who asked for information and did not enrol, with the reason where it is known. It is the list next year’s campaign will open with, and it is worth more than any advertising.

The second: the questions asked, in full, as they were asked. Read in one sitting they say exactly what your communication does not explain — and there is almost always one question that came up ten times with nothing answering it.

That reading has to happen in the days after and not in June. Three weeks later the book is still there and the memory of the conversations is not, and it is the second that gives the first its meaning.

The third thing to write is shorter and harder: what went badly in the organisation this year, in three lines, while it is still annoying. Written in June, that review becomes "on the whole it went well", which helps nobody.

What is counted, and why there is no series

Three things are counted during the window, on the desk book, and they need no tool. Enquiries received, pre-registrations, and confirmed enrolments, taken once a week.

The ratio between the first two is the only useful indicator during a campaign, because it can be read early and acted on: a high volume of enquiries with few pre-registrations signals an information problem, usually price or hours.

The figure we will not give is a benchmark conversion rate, and the reason is not that it is confidential. It is that it cannot exist in the form of a series.

A school observes its enrolment once a year. Ten years of history make ten observations, and between any two of them the programme, the prices, the local competition, the holiday dates and often the teaching staff have changed. None of those ten observations is comparable with the next except vaguely.

That is a difference in kind from the trades in this series that sell every day, not merely a shortage of data. A shop can wait and accumulate; a school that waits ten years gets ten points taken in ten different markets. So compare your three figures with your own previous year, and treat that comparison as an indication rather than a measurement.

What we do, and what we refuse to do

What we do happens before the window: we write the five pieces of information and make them identical everywhere, we prepare the two telephone answers — parent and adult — and we set up the book and last year’s list.

We will publish no pass rate, and that is the rule the neighbouring article sets and we apply here without exception. A pass rate depends on who was admitted as much as on who taught, and it is verifiable by nobody.

We will write no reference to limited places that does not correspond to a real, written capacity. It is a widespread practice in this sector, it works for one year, and it turns on you in a market where families talk to each other.

We will promise no number of enrolments and will set no numerical target for a campaign, for the reason written in the previous section: there is no series on which to base a forecast, and a target built on one previous year is an invention presented as a method.

Finally, the most profitable part happens without us and is prepared now: last year’s list, five exact pieces of information in one place, and two written answers by the phone. That is one morning, before the opening, and it is the moment when an hour is worth the most.

Frequently asked questions

Where does an enrolment campaign start?

With last year’s list, two weeks before the official opening. The people who asked for information and did not enrol had a reason — a price, a date, another choice — and those reasons expire. Contacting them before everybody else is a real service, and it costs nothing.

Should the price be published?

Yes, and the argument here is operational rather than moral: a page without a price does not reduce calls, it changes their nature. Instead of calling to enrol, people call to ask the price and hang up — occupying the line at the point in the year when it matters most.

How many follow-ups during the window?

Three, with different content: information they did not ask for three or four days after the enquiry, a reminder of the deadline ten days before closing, and a practical message two days before. The second produces the most enrolments and is very often missing. No manufactured urgency and no invented limited places.

What is pre-registration actually for?

To give you, two weeks before closing, an estimate of how many groups to open — information nothing else supplies in time. It has to stay minimal: name, number, course, date. Adding documents turns it into a file, and a file gets put off.

How do we prepare for the last week?

By deciding it in week 1, because it is predictable: a second trained person, extended hours announced in advance, and a separate queue for anybody who pre-registered. The last is the most effective, because it gives a real reason to pre-register, which improves your forecast of groups.

What conversion rate should we aim for?

None from outside, and not out of caution: a school observes its enrolment once a year. Ten years make ten observations, between which the programme, prices, competition, holiday dates and often the staff have changed. Compare your three figures with your own previous year and treat the comparison as an indication.

Where we come in

The people who asked for information last year and did not enrol are your best list, and it is already in your notebook.

We settle what the campaign must say, and align it across every surface.
We prepare the two standard replies before the window opens.
We check that any mention of limited places matches a real capacity.

We will set no numeric enrolment target for a campaign: the number depends on your price and your reputation, not on what we write.

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