Open House Registration and Follow-Up

An open house produces the cheapest leads an agent will ever touch. These are people who gave up part of a Sunday, drove to a specific address, and walked through someone else's kitchen. Intent does not get much clearer than that. And almost all of it is thrown away at the front door, because the capture mechanism is a clipboard.

Handwriting is illegible. Half the email addresses are deliberately wrong. Phone numbers lose a digit. The sheet rides around in the passenger seat until Wednesday, and nobody wants to spend an evening typing it up, so it gets typed badly or not at all. Meanwhile the visitor who said out loud that they were pre-approved and relocating in six weeks has already called whoever answered first. The window in which a visitor still remembers which agent was standing in the hallway is roughly forty-eight hours, and a clipboard guarantees you miss it.

The follow-up, when it happens, is one generic message to everyone. The relocating pre-approved buyer, the neighbor who came to compare kitchens, and the buyer who already has an agent all get the same thanks for stopping by note. Money leaks in three places: visitors who were never captured at all, captured visitors who were never contacted inside the window where they remember you, and the seller who never receives a credible written report of who came through their house and what they said about the price.

Pipeline and stages

One pipeline, Open House Leads, with stages in this order:

• Registered - signed in at the door, no contact attempted yet
• Contacted - at least one outbound message delivered, no reply
• In Conversation - replied to a text, email or call
• Qualified - timeline, financing and agent status all captured
• Consultation Booked - buyer consultation on the calendar
• Showing Booked - private showing on the calendar
• Active Buyer - working with the agent, searching
• Long Nurture - real but more than six months out
• Referred Out - already represented, handled courteously
• Dead - bad contact details or explicit opt-out

A second pipeline, Seller Prospects, receives neighbor visitors: Neighbor Captured, Valuation Requested, Listing Appointment Booked, Appointment Held, Listing Won, Listing Lost.

Calendars

• Buyer Consultation - 45 min, video or office, same-day and next-day slots left deliberately open on Monday and Tuesday so hot open house leads have somewhere to land
• Private Showing Request - 60 min, with a 4-hour minimum notice window and a travel buffer of 30 minutes either side
• Listing Appointment - 60 min, used by the neighbor branch
• Open House Shifts, an internal-only calendar so each event has a start time, end time, address and host agent that automations can read

Custom fields

Create these on the contact record. The names matter because every workflow below references them.

• oh_property_address - the address they visited, text
• oh_visit_date - date
• oh_host_agent - text, the agent who ran the door
• oh_registration_method - dropdown: Tablet, QR code, Manual entry, Phone
• buyer_timeline - dropdown: 0–30 days, 1–3 months, 3–6 months, 6–12 months, Just looking
• financing_status - dropdown: Cash, Fully pre-approved, Pre-qualified only, Not started, Needs a lender referral
• working_with_agent - dropdown: No, Yes - signed agreement, Yes - informal, Unsure
• price_ceiling - number
• must_haves - long text, filled from the survey in the visitor's own words
• visit_rating - number 1 to 5, the host agent's gut read, set at the door
• neighbor_flag - checkbox, ticked when the visitor lives within the same neighborhood
• feedback_on_price - long text, what they said about the asking price
• feedback_on_condition - long text
• seller_report_include - checkbox, default ticked, lets a visitor's comments be excluded from the seller report on request

Tags

• oh-registered on every sign-in, plus a per-event tag in the form oh-2026-04-12-maple-st so any single open house can be reported on or messaged as a segment
• buyer-hot, buyer-warm, buyer-cold - set by the qualification logic, never by hand
• has-agent, neighbor-visitor, needs-lender
• oh-no-contact for anyone who never responded to three attempts
• sms-opted-out, email-unsubscribed as hard suppression tags every workflow checks first

Forms and surveys

• Door sign-in form, built for a tablet standing in the entry on a locked kiosk page: first name, last name, mobile, email, the question Are you currently working with an agent?, How soon are you looking to move?, and a single tick box carrying the SMS and email consent language. Phone and email fields use format validation so a mistyped number is caught at the door rather than three days later.
• QR fallback form, the same fields on a mobile-friendly page, printed on the sign-in card and on the property flyer for visitors who would rather use their own phone, and as the backstop when the tablet loses signal.
• Host agent debrief form, one per visitor, filled by the agent between groups: visit_rating, feedback_on_price, feedback_on_condition, neighbor_flag.
• Post-visit survey, three questions sent by email the same evening: What did you like most about the house?, What would have to be different for you to make an offer?, What else should we show you? Answers write into must_haves.

BO's role and guardrails

• BO handles the 48-hour qualification conversation over SMS: confirming the visit, asking timeline, financing and agent status, and offering the consultation calendar.
• BO may ask questions, send the calendar link, and record answers into the custom fields above.
• BO may not quote or negotiate a price, comment on what a property is worth, give any opinion on financing terms, or discuss anything that touches a protected characteristic. Train it to deflect schooling, demographic and neighborhood-quality questions to the agent with a single line: Good question - that is one for the agent, I will have them come back to you.
• Hard handoff rules: BO stops and notifies the host agent immediately on the words offer, attorney, contract, inspection, or any mention of a competing agent.
• BO observes quiet hours and never sends a first message to a brand new contact outside 8am to 9pm in the contact's own time zone.

Numbers and channels

• One dedicated local number per listing agent for SMS and voice, registered for A2P messaging, with the office main line left untouched.
• Missed-call text-back on every agent number, because open house visitors frequently call the sign before they call anyone else.
• Email sent from the agent's own domain with authentication records in place so same-day recaps reach the inbox rather than the promotions tab.
• A single inbox view per agent so SMS replies, emails and voicemails from the same visitor sit on one timeline.

One visitor, from the doorstep to a signed buyer agreement.

1. Sunday, 1:12pm. A couple walks in. The host agent hands them the tablet standing on the entry table. They enter first name, last name, mobile, email, tick the consent box, select No for working with an agent and 1–3 months for timeline. The form takes under forty seconds.
2. On submit, the contact is created or merged against an existing record by cell number, tagged oh-registered and oh-2026-04-12-maple-st, written into oh_property_address and oh_visit_date, assigned to the host agent, and dropped into the Registered stage of the Open House Leads pipeline.
3. Within sixty seconds the visitor's phone buzzes with a text from the host agent's number: a thank-you, the agent's name, and a link to the full property page. They read it while still standing in the kitchen, which is the entire point - the agent now has a name on their phone rather than a face they will forget by dinner.
4. Between groups the host agent opens the debrief form on their own phone, selects this visitor from the list of today's registrations, and records visit_rating 4, said the price felt about right but the second bathroom is small into feedback_on_price and feedback_on_condition, and leaves neighbor_flag unticked.
5. Sunday, 7:30pm. The recap email goes out: photos, the floor plan, the disclosure packet, two comparable active listings, and the three-question survey. The couple answers the survey from the sofa. Their answers land in must_haves verbatim.
6. Monday, 10:00am. BO opens the qualification conversation by SMS. It confirms the address they visited, asks whether they have spoken to a lender yet, and asks what else they would like to see. The couple replies that they are pre-approved with their credit union.
7. BO writes financing_status as Fully pre-approved, keeps buyer_timeline at 1–3 months, confirms working_with_agent is No, and the scoring logic applies buyer-hot. The record moves to Qualified and the host agent gets a push notification with the three answers in the first line of the alert.
8. Because the contact is buyer-hot, BO immediately offers the Buyer Consultation calendar instead of continuing to chat, and the fast-track workflow starts a two-hour timer on the host agent to place a live call regardless of what BO is doing.
9. The agent calls at 10:20am, has a real conversation, and while on the call the couple books a 45-minute consultation for Tuesday evening from the link BO already sent. The record moves to Consultation Booked and all remaining nurture sequences stop.
10. Confirmation goes out instantly by email and SMS, with a 24-hour and a 2-hour reminder queued. The 2-hour reminder includes the agent's mobile and a one-tap reschedule link, because a reschedule is infinitely better than a no-show.
11. Tuesday evening. The consultation is held. The agent marks the appointment as showed, which moves the record to Active Buyer, sends the buyer agreement for signature, and enrolls the couple in the active-buyer listing alert sequence instead of the open house nurture.
12. Meanwhile, four other visitors from the same open house did not reply to anything. After three attempts across nine days they are tagged oh-no-contact, moved to Long Nurture, and switched to a monthly market email they will keep receiving until they either engage or unsubscribe.
13. One visitor ticked that they lived two streets away. They are tagged neighbor-visitor, added to the Seller Prospects pipeline at Neighbor Captured, and offered a valuation on their own home rather than being chased as a buyer.
14. Monday morning after the open house. The seller receives the open house report automatically: number of registered visitors, how many were pre-approved, how many already had agents, the price and condition comments collected at the door with names removed, and the number of private showings booked off the back of the event. The seller sees the agent working rather than having to ask.

Every workflow below begins with the same suppression gate: if sms-opted-out is present, skip all SMS steps; if email-unsubscribed is present, skip all email steps; if both, exit immediately. Build that gate once as a reusable first condition.

1. Door Capture and Instant Welcome

Trigger: Door sign-in form or QR fallback form submitted.

Actions in order:

1. Find or create the contact, matching on cell number first and email second, so a repeat visitor does not become a duplicate.
2. Write oh_property_address, oh_visit_date, oh_host_agent and oh_registration_method from the form and the active Open House Shifts event.
3. Apply oh-registered and the per-event tag. Assign the contact owner to the host agent.
4. Create an opportunity in Open House Leads at Registered, named with the visitor surname and the property address.
5. Branch on working_with_agent. If Yes - signed agreement, apply has-agent and jump to workflow 5. Otherwise continue.
6. Wait 1 minute. Send SMS from the host agent number: "Hi {{first_name}}, it's {{agent_first_name}} - thanks for coming through {{oh_property_address}} today. Here are the full photos, floor plan and disclosures: {{property_link}}. Text me here if anything comes up, I'll see it."
7. Wait 3 minutes. Send email with the same link plus the agent's headshot, license line and direct mobile, so the visitor has a searchable record of who the agent is.
8. Move the opportunity to Contacted.

Exit: on any inbound reply, on has-agent, or on opt-out.

2. Same-Day Evening Recap and Survey

Trigger: tag oh-registered added.

Condition: contact is not tagged has-agent.

Actions:

1. Wait until 7:30pm on the day of the visit, using the contact's time zone. If the sign-in happened after 7:30pm, wait until 10:00am the next day instead.
2. Send email, subject "Your notes from {{oh_property_address}}": the photo gallery, floor plan, disclosure packet, two comparable active listings, and a clear button to the three-question survey.
3. Wait 1 day. If the survey has not been submitted, send one SMS: "{{first_name}}, quick one - what would have to be different about {{oh_property_address}} for you to make an offer on it? Even one line helps me find you the right one."
4. On survey submission, write the answers into must_haves, notify the host agent, and move the opportunity to In Conversation.

Exit: survey submitted, consultation booked, or opt-out.

3. BO's 48-Hour Qualification Conversation

Trigger: opportunity enters Contacted.

Condition: buyer_timeline or financing_status is empty.

Actions:

1. Wait until 10:00am the next calendar day, inside quiet hours.
2. Hand the conversation to BO with the qualification objective: capture buyer_timeline, financing_status, price_ceiling and confirm working_with_agent, in that order, one question per message.
3. Opening message: "Morning {{first_name}} - {{agent_first_name}}'s assistant here. Two quick things so we only send you houses worth your time: roughly when are you hoping to be moved in, and have you spoken to a lender yet?"
4. BO asks at most one follow-up per reply and never sends two messages in a row without an answer.
5. If no reply after 1 day, send a second attempt at 4:00pm: "No rush {{first_name}} - are you actively looking right now, or more keeping an eye on the market?" If still no reply after a further 3 days, send a third and final attempt, then apply oh-no-contact, move to Long Nurture and hand to workflow 7.
6. When all four fields are captured, score and tag: buyer-hot if timeline is 0–30 days or 1–3 months and financing is Cash or Fully pre-approved and working_with_agent is No; buyer-warm if timeline is 12 months or less and financing is anything other than Not started; otherwise buyer-cold.
7. Move the opportunity to Qualified. If financing_status is Not started or Needs a lender referral, also apply needs-lender and create a task for the agent to make the lender introduction by name rather than sending a link.

Exit: all fields captured, any handoff keyword detected, consultation booked, or opt-out.

4. Hot Buyer Fast-Track

Trigger: tag buyer-hot added.

Actions:

1. Notify the host agent by push and SMS at once, with timeline, financing and price ceiling in the first line of the alert.
2. Create a task Call now - hot open house lead due in 2 hours, assigned to the host agent.
3. Send the visitor an SMS offering the consultation calendar: "{{first_name}}, based on your timeline I'd rather talk properly than text. Here are times this week: {{consultation_link}}. Or call me direct on {{agent_mobile}}."
4. Wait 2 hours. If the task is still open and no call has been logged, escalate: notify the team lead and reassign the task to the on-duty agent. A hot lead unanswered for two hours is a lost lead.
5. Wait 1 day. If nothing is booked, send one more SMS with two named time options rather than a link: "Would Wednesday 6pm or Thursday 12pm suit better?" Two choices convert better than an open calendar.
6. On booking, move to Consultation Booked, send the confirmation, and queue reminders at 24 hours and 2 hours before.

Exit: consultation booked, showing booked, or opt-out.

5. Already Represented - Courtesy Branch

Trigger: tag has-agent added.

Why it exists: chasing a buyer who has signed with another agent is at best wasted effort and at worst a professional complaint. This branch protects the relationship and keeps the data.

Actions:

1. Suppress all buyer nurture workflows for this contact.
2. Send one email only: "Thanks for coming through {{oh_property_address}}, {{first_name}}. I know you're working with someone already so I won't fill your inbox - please pass my details to your agent if you'd like a second showing, and I've attached the disclosure packet for them."
3. Move the opportunity to Referred Out and mark it closed.
4. Notify the listing agent so they can log the visit toward the seller report, where a represented visitor is a genuinely positive signal.
5. Add the contact to a once-yearly market email only, nothing more frequent.

Exit: immediately after step 5, unless the contact later initiates a conversation themselves.

6. Neighbor to Seller Lead

Trigger: neighbor_flag set to true on the debrief form, or sign-in address falls inside the listing's own ZIP code.

Actions:

1. Apply neighbor-visitor. Remove the contact from all buyer sequences.
2. Create an opportunity in Seller Prospects at Neighbor Captured.
3. Wait 2 days. Send email: "{{first_name}}, you mentioned you're nearby - once {{oh_property_address}} closes I'll know exactly what this street is actually trading at. Want me to send you what it sold for and what that means for your place?"
4. Wait 2 days. If opened but not clicked, send SMS: "Happy to put together a proper valuation on yours - no obligation, and I won't chase you. Want it?"
5. On reply or click, move to Valuation Requested and offer the Listing Appointment calendar.
6. Independently, when the listing closes, send every neighbor-visitor on that street the actual sold result. This is the single highest-intent message in the whole build and it costs nothing to send.

Exit: listing appointment booked, explicit no, or opt-out.

7. Unresponsive Visitor 90-Day Revival

Trigger: tag oh-no-contact added, or opportunity sits in Long Nurture.

Actions:

1. Stop all SMS. This contact has ignored three texts and more will only earn an opt-out.
2. Enroll in a monthly email on the first Tuesday: one new listing matching must_haves if populated, one recent sold result on the street they visited, and one short market note.
3. At day 30, day 60 and day 90, insert a single soft re-engagement line with a reply prompt: "Still looking, {{first_name}}, or have you found something?" Any reply moves the record back to In Conversation and restarts workflow 3.
4. At day 90 with zero opens across all sends, move the opportunity to Dead and drop frequency to quarterly.
5. If a new open house registration ever arrives for the same contact, clear oh-no-contact and start again from workflow 1 - a second visit is a strong signal and must reset the clock.

Exit: any reply, any booking, unsubscribe, or Dead.

8. Seller Open House Report

Trigger: Open House Shifts event ends.

Actions:

1. Wait until 9:00am the next business day, so late sign-ins and debrief forms are all in.
2. Assemble counts from the per-event tag: total registered, pre-approved or cash, already represented, neighbors, private showings booked, consultations booked.
3. Pull feedback_on_price and feedback_on_condition for every visitor where seller_report_include is true, strip names, and list the comments verbatim.
4. Email the seller: "Here's exactly who came through {{property_address}} on Sunday and what they said." Counts first, comments second, recommended next action third.
5. Create a task for the listing agent to call the seller within 24 hours if three or more visitors commented that the price was too high - that is a pricing conversation, not an email.

Exit: report sent.

The clipboard is gone. Every visitor who walks through the door leaves with a validated cell number and email in the database, tagged to that specific event, assigned to that specific agent, with a text already on their phone before they reach their car. Nothing waits for Wednesday.

The agent's time moves to the top of the funnel. Instead of spending Monday typing names and sending the same email to twenty people, the agent spends Monday on the phone to the three people the system has already identified as pre-approved, unrepresented and moving inside ninety days. Everyone else is still being worked - just not by a human.

The seller relationship changes as much as the buyer one. A listing agent who emails a written report every Monday morning with visitor counts and verbatim price feedback is a listing agent who gets a price reduction agreed without a fight, and who gets referred. Most agents cannot produce that report because they never collected the data.

Metrics to watch

• Registration rate - registered visitors divided by estimated total visitors. Count groups manually for the first few events to get a baseline. Anything under roughly three-quarters means the tablet is not being handed over consistently.
• Contact validity rate - percentage of registrations where the SMS delivered and the email did not bounce. This is the single most diagnostic number in the build.
• Time to first contact - should be under two minutes, measured from form submission to SMS delivery.
• Qualification completion rate - percentage of registrations where buyer_timeline, financing_status and working_with_agent are all populated within seven days.
• Reply rate by workflow step - which specific message earns the reply. Expect the survey question and the sold-result message to outperform everything else.
• Registrations to consultations booked, and separately consultations held to buyer agreements signed. Keep these apart - they fail for different reasons and get fixed differently.
• Neighbor conversion - neighbor-visitor contacts that reach Listing Appointment Booked. This is where the build quietly pays for itself.
• Cost per registration and per consultation by event, so you learn which properties and which weekends are worth staffing.
• Opt-out rate per workflow. If any sequence exceeds the rate you see elsewhere in the account, that sequence is too aggressive - reduce frequency before it damages number reputation.

Prerequisites

• A tablet per open house with a case, a stand, a charger, and a mobile data connection or hotspot. Do not rely on the seller's wifi password.
• The sign-in page loaded in a locked kiosk or guided-access mode so a visitor cannot wander out of the form into the browser.
• Printed QR cards and flyer footers pointing at the fallback form, as the backup for a dead tablet and the preference of visitors who would rather use their own phone.
• Property assets ready before the event: photo gallery link, floor plan, disclosure packet, and two comparable active listings for the recap email.
• One named host agent per event, recorded on the Open House Shifts calendar, so assignment and the two-hour escalation have a real owner.
• Agreement with the seller that visitor feedback will be collected and reported to them, with names removed.

Integrations

• Google Calendar or Outlook two-way sync on every agent's calendar, so consultation and showing slots reflect reality and the system never double-books a Sunday.
• Email sending domain authenticated with SPF, DKIM and DMARC records published before the first send. Recap emails that land in spam make the whole build look broken.
• Whatever listing feed or property page the recap email links to, confirmed to be publicly reachable without a login.
• Optional: a document signing tool for the buyer agreement, triggered when the record reaches Active Buyer.

Number provisioning and messaging compliance

• Provision one local number per agent for SMS and voice. Shared numbers break the single-thread experience and make missed-call text-back ambiguous.
• Complete A2P 10DLC brand and campaign registration before a single message sends. Expect the brand to clear quickly and the campaign to take longer; start it at the beginning of the build, not the end. Submit the sign-in form page as the proof of opt-in, with the consent language visible on it.
• The consent tick box on the sign-in form must state who is messaging, what kind of messages will be sent, that message and data rates may apply, and how to stop. Keep it unticked by default and keep a timestamped record of each submission.
• Honor STOP, UNSUBSCRIBE, END, QUIT and CANCEL automatically by applying sms-opted-out and halting every SMS step. Honor HELP with a reply naming the business and the agent.
• Set quiet hours at 8am to 9pm in the contact's own time zone and enforce them at the account level, not inside individual workflows, so a new workflow cannot accidentally bypass them.
• Every marketing email carries a working one-click unsubscribe and a physical mailing address.

Compliance and data protection

• Open house visitor data is personal data. Decide and document how long you will keep a non-converting registration, who in the office can see it, and what happens to it if the visitor asks for deletion. Have an answer ready before someone asks.
• Fair housing applies to automated messages exactly as it applies to spoken ones. Never segment, tag or branch on anything that correlates with a protected characteristic, and never let BO answer questions about schools, safety, or who lives in a neighborhood. Review every message template in the build against this before launch.
• Seller reports must exclude visitor names and any identifying detail unless the visitor agreed otherwise - that is what seller_report_include is for.
• Agency disclosure requirements vary by jurisdiction, and some require specific language on first contact with an unrepresented buyer. Check what applies where you operate and put it in the welcome message.
• Confirm all of the above with the client's own attorney or broker compliance officer. Nothing here is legal advice, and messaging, agency and data rules differ materially between states and countries.

Scoping

Open house volume, the number of agents, and the depth of the seller reporting all change the build. To scope it against a real operation, book a call at bookings.appbo.io.