This article was originally published on October 4, 2021 and updated with new information on August 27, 2026.
Child care enrollment refers to the official intake process involved in ensuring a child receives care, education or other services at your child care center or daycare. Your enrollment numbers matter; when you’re at capacity, you maximize profitability. However, when your enrollment falls, these placement gaps create operational gaps.
Child care center tours represent a major opportunity to increase enrollment, as they offer a first-hand look at how much your care center offers families. These tours are your time to shine, and they showcase the quality of care your staff provides to every child you enroll. Most importantly, these tours and the insight they offer families also act as an entry point to official enrollment, helping to minimize capacity gaps.
How much thought and advance preparation do you put into your child care center tours? If you’re like most daycare owners, the answer is not nearly enough.
Let’s take a look at five tips to improve your tours, connect with parents on a deeper level and grow enrollment.
Daycare Tours: A Marketing Strategy to Boost Enrollment
You can increase daycare enrollment by marketing your center and your care expertise via an official tour for interested families. These walkthroughs allow families to fully understand the care, compassion and daily experiences your center offers. Tours help families find their ideal center, allowing them to understand the culture, staff and experiences that will be part of their child’s daily routines if they enroll.
The best tours create memorable experiences for families; tours should be planned, meaningful and offer insights about your care center. Here are five key tips to a great tour:
1. Give Daycare Tours at Specific Times
Your child care center tours should always happen at specific hours of the day. That way you can schedule them at opportune moments and ensure your staff is prepared.
What if a parent wants to schedule a tour right before nap time, when kids are tired and cranky? Parents should feel comfortable when they tour your center and see kids when they’re playing and enjoying all the great programs you have to offer.
Consider allowing parents to book tours between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. on Tuesday and Thursdays, or whenever works best for you and your team.
Once a tour is booked, send parents an email to confirm their appointment. Then send them a reminder message the day before the tour to reduce the likelihood of no-shows.
2. Have a Dedicated Tour Host
Train a dedicated tour host to conduct all child care center tours. The best tour hosts have the following traits:
- Knowledge: Your tour host needs to have an intimate knowledge of your center’s curriculum, policies, safety measures and pricing structure. If your host can’t answer parents’ questions, you’ll have a hard time securing new customers.
- Exuberance: The person you choose to host tours should enjoy working for your business. Parents won’t send their child to your daycare if the staff is miserable. Show parents that people want to be a part of your operation.
- Listening Skills: A host needs to be able to listen to parents’ wants and concerns and tailor their tours to address these things. If they can do that, your center will grow.
Can’t find a team member with all three of these traits? Don’t worry! Practice makes perfect. After giving a few tours, your host will learn the process and improve.
3. Tours Must Identify What Makes You Different
Your child care center tours should highlight things that distinguish your center from the others in your area.
Are all of your teachers certified? Are diapers and wipes included in your tuition? Do you use a specific kind of curriculum? What makes it so great? Does your center feature above-average play equipment or a top-grade security system?
The parents who tour your daycare will compare it to the others in your community. Give them a reason to choose you over the competition.
Create a Kid-Friendly and Parent-Friendly Care Center Tour
Care center tours should engage parents and the child; provide age-appropriate gifts to children, helping them feel welcome and creating a sense of excitement as they explore your center. Parents aren’t the only ones you have to sell your daycare to. You need to make sure their kids enjoy your child care center tours as well.
An age-appropriate toy — preferably one with your center’s logo stenciled on it — is a great way to get on a child’s good side. This kind of thoughtful gesture will go a long way with parents, too, and help give your center a positive reputation. Word of advice: make sure it’s a toy that won’t drive the parents made. No whistles or slime, thanks.
5. Send Parents Home With Information Packets About Your Center
Your child care center tour is done. Now what?
First, ask parents if they’d like to enroll their children in your daycare, but don’t come on too strong. Say something like, “I’ve loved getting to know you and your kids today! Should I get the enrollment paperwork started for you?”
If parents want more time to think about their decision, give them an information packet such as a small folder or brochure that includes important details about your business.
Your packet should include:
- Major selling points: What makes your daycare the best in town? List these things so that parents can refer back to them when deciding between child care providers.
- Social proof: Your packet should include at least one (or two or three!) glowing reviews from past or current customers to make new parents feel comfortable.
- Contact information: Your center’s phone number and email should be clearly visible so that it’s easy for parents to contact you when they’re ready to move forward.
A well-crafted information packet will help convince parents that your daycare is the right fit for their family. Take the time to make it right and your business will improve.
A Daycare Tour Checklist: Be Prepared
If you are preparing to organize a tour or need to restructure your center’s current tour processes, use our daycare tour checklist to ensure you check off every task and create a well-organized, memorable tour experience for new families.
| Before the tour | During the tour | After the tour |
| ☐ Confirm every family’s appointment via email; create a reminder to do this 24 hours before the tour | ☐ Ask each child’s name and age; do they have a nickname? | ☐ Provide a comprehensive information packet about the center to each family |
| ☐ Discuss the family’s interests, concerns and needs with the tour host. This helps them tailor the tour to each family | ☐ Discuss the curriculum, safety processes and costs in the beginning of the tour | ☐ Each family represents a lead towards a new enrollment; always schedule a follow-up call or email with each touring family |
| ☐ Prepare gifts for each child | ☐ Highlight the culture of your care center; make sure families understand how you are unique from competitors | ☐ Follow up with each family until it is confirmed that they are either enrolling or have pursued another care center option |
| ☐ Inquire about enrollment paperwork; find out if the family wants to begin the enrollment process |
Top Questions to Expect From Families
There are certain questions that parents will ask you or your staff; be prepared to answer the following common questions about enrollment and your center:
- What are the child to staff ratios?
- Is your staff certified?
- What is your curriculum?
- What does the day typically look like for a child?
- What are your safety protocols?
- How do families report an illness? What is the process for children who need daily medications?
- What does tuition include? Are there any additional costs?
- What are your communication processes? Do you use push notifications? Send emails?
How to Follow-Up After the Tour and Reduce Your Waitlist
Lisa Henkel, vice president of education and training at ChildcareCRM, a global software company specializing in customer relationship and lead management, presented a session called “Engaging with Families from Interest to Enrollment” at The Business of Child Care virtual conference hosted by Procare Solutions on July 21, 2021. She described the “rule of seven, which suggests that families need to hear an advertising message seven times before they will consider enrolling for care. Contacting a prospective family at least five to seven times increases the likelihood of enrollment by 67 percent.
“Parents are super busy. They have a lot going on in addition to looking for care,” Lisa said.
Lisa gave the following suggestions to help in sharing your message and facilitate enrollment. Use these simple actionable steps:
- Make text messages a priority. The vast majority of today’s parents are millennials, and 60 percent of millennials prefer texting over email and phone to communicate with businesses.
- Personalize your communications. Include the recipient’s name in each email. Texts are important, but phone calls are good too. Parents crave personability from their child care providers and phone calls and face-to-face interactions give them that. When you personalize your messaging and cater to your families’ specific needs, you are better positioned as a reliable and knowledgeable person they can trust.
- Create a sense of urgency. Many families are feeling financially insecure due to the economy and aren’t ready to make commitments with their money. So be their ally. Be honest and let them know when spots are filling up.
- Automate your follow-ups. Use a lead management tool’s two-way communication feature to interact with parents through email and texts.
- Digitize your registration forms. Let parents complete enrollment paperwork online at a time that makes sense for their schedule. You can use the ProcareDocuments feature, which allows you and your families to electronically sign documents within Procare Online or via Procare Parent Engagement for Procare Desktop users.
FAQ
Centers reduce daycare waitlist times by tracking their current openings, scheduling regular follow-up calls or communications with families on the waitlist and using enrollment planning platforms that offer visibility into potential openings in each room in 30 to 90 days. Using these strategies, daycares and child care centers get ahead of openings, filling them before they lead to operational and financial gaps.
Enrollment timelines vary, but a typical timeline often includes a tour followed by enrollment a few weeks later. Digital registration online helps ease the process for busy families, as online sign-ups and forms let them handle the process on their timeframe.
Simplify and tighten the steps from the first inquiry to an official enrollment by providing scheduled tours with a knowledgeable tour host and following up regularly. Automated reminders for follow-ups also can help your center convert more families to the official enrollment stage.
The difference between a child care center or daycare waitlist and open enrollment at child care centers is that a wait list means that there are currently no available openings for new students, while open enrollment means that the care center is actively filling open spots. When spots become available at the center, those individuals on the wait list may enroll.
The documents frequently required for enrollment in daycare centers or child care centers include the enrollment application, an up-to-date immunization record, emergency contact information, pickup authorization paperwork (designating who may pick-up the child) and any necessary medical information (like allergies, daily medication, etc.). Providing a portal to submit digital records may aid enrollment for busy parents.
