Teams begin by clarifying event objectives—whether to increase applications, yield admitted students, or re-engage inactive prospects. Planning involves selecting appropriate formats (in-person, virtual, or hybrid), scheduling around audience availability, developing agendas, and coordinating presenter assignments across academic and support departments.

Challenge: Multi-stakeholder planning cycles are often measured in weeks or months, with coordination across admissions, marketing, facilities, academic departments, and student services requiring numerous meetings and approval rounds.

Institutions build dedicated landing pages with RSVP or form functionality and promote events through email campaigns, SMS messaging, social media, and local partnerships. Outreach leverages both purchased prospect lists and existing inquiry pools, with messaging segmented by demographic and interest factors.

Challenge: Manual list compilation and segmentation delays campaign launches, while generic messaging limits personalization and engagement potential.

Staff monitor registration numbers, manage capacity limits, send confirmation communications, and coordinate with various departments to ensure adequate staffing and resources for expected attendance levels.
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Challenge: Registration data often exists separately from CRM systems, requiring manual data entry and making it difficult to identify high-priority prospects or track engagement history.

Whether virtual or in-person, events feature structured agendas mixing presentations with interactive elements like campus tours, program breakouts, and Q&A sessions. Faculty, staff, and student ambassadors serve as institutional representatives, while attendance is tracked through check-in processes.

Challenge: Manual check-in procedures can create bottlenecks, and attendance tracking methods may be incomplete, affecting the quality of follow-up data.

Teams send thank-you communications within 24-48 hours, and enroll attendees in nurture campaigns highlighting next steps, deadlines, and support services. Follow-up messaging is tailored based on expressed interests when resources permit.
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Challenge: Manual follow-up processes can delay outreach, potentially missing the optimal engagement window, while no-show prospects often receive minimal re-engagement attention.

Institutions analyze attendance data, track conversion to applications, collect participant feedback, and document insights to inform future event planning and strategy refinement.
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Challenge: Data analysis requires manual compilation from multiple sources, making comprehensive ROI assessment time-intensive and potentially incomplete.

Ideas for Specific Targeting

Virtual Info Session

✨ Pro Tip: Build intelligent fallback options into your job instructions. For example, your instructions could read: "If the student indicates they can't attend the event due to schedule conflicts, work, or other commitments, pivot to promoting our individual campus tours or virtual info sessions." Since jobs with the "Promote Event" action can promote multiple events, your agent becomes a smart concierge, finding the right opportunity for each student rather than accepting a dead end. This approach can recover 15-20% of "lost" registrations by matching students with alternatives that fit their needs.

✨ Pro Tip: Create a separate segment for no-shows and build a different job to re-engage them. Instead of focusing on what they missed, pivot to scheduling a personal campus tour or attending the next event. This targeted approach can recover 20-30% of no-shows.

💡 Use Case: When encouraging attendees to apply via a Bolt Agent Job, enable the Consider Past Activity setting so the agent checks whether they’ve already submitted an application. If someone applied at the event—or even beforehand—they’ll be marked as Goal Completed and excluded from follow-up messages, keeping your outreach relevant and respectful.

Q: Can agents handle complex event questions?

A: Yes, agents are trained on your event details and can handle most inquiries, escalating to staff when needed (if configured).

Q: What about last-minute changes or cancellations?

A: You can use a Bolt Agent Job to notify all registrants of changes and help reschedule or provide alternative event options. For this use case, consider using the ‘urgent’ setting on the job.

Q: How do we maintain the personal touch?

A: Agents enhance rather than replace staff interaction, freeing them to focus on meaningful conversations before, during, and after events.