Elevating endurance and fundraising communities with the art of technology.
We are excited to announce our newest team member, Yusuf Kajee. Yusuf is joining us as a Software Developer and will be working on and expanding mobile applications of RunSignup Software To welcome Yusuf to our team and to give him the opportunity to tell his story, we spent time learning more about him both […]
App Flow Updates Added “Backup Timer” App Flow, and helper text for how each App Flow should be used (tap the “i” next to “Select an App Flow). Score & Publish Results Participant Data will sync down from RunSignup, and all of your results will be uploaded to RunSignup. Any existing results at RunSignup for […]
We like to hear from people in the industry to find out more about them and how they use RunSignup’s products. Recently, RunSignup’s Steve Bingham-Hawk chatted with Michelle Craske with Sommer Sports to get some inside scoop. For those of you not familiar with Sommer Sports, it is an established race management company located in Clermont, Florida. It’s founder, Fred Sommer, is highly regarded as one of the long-time substantial influencers of the triathlon industry and helped the industry transform throughout the years. He has also continued to stay abreast of changes in the industry to continue to provide a sought-after race experience. Fred has also been a valued customer of RunSignup and uses its many capabilities to support the events they manage and the participants and volunteers who take part in in them.
We are planning to do an upgrade to Amazon AWS Aurora MySQL 2 sometime in the next week and a half. We expect less than 5 minutes of potential system impact. Another blog will be posted the day before we do the upgrades. Planned Impact There should be minimal impact with the whole upgrade process […]
We’re shaking things up this winter and heading out on the road to meet more of our customers! After evaluating our internal events goals, we have decided to forego our Winter Symposium in lieu of a series of smaller events in more corners of the country. This Roadshow will allow us to connect with customers […]
One of the many FREE tools events using RunSignup can take advantage of is RunSignup’s RaceDay Photo platform. Events can improve the race experience by providing an elevated experience with free photos that are integrated with their personal race results. You can create albums for your event and offer team photos as well. Plus, you can offer sponsors branding opportunities by applying sponsor logo watermarks to photos. This webinar offers a quick how-to on how to set this up and easily load in photos.
Feature Updates Improved Syncing Performance in a number of ways. Updated Icons to current standards. Bug Fixes Fixed an issue causing giveaways to not be copied over when transferring a participant to another Event. Fixed an issue causing the app to not be available for download on Chromebooks that only have a single, front-facing camera. […]
We have been doing the race registration market analysis every 6 months for many years. We include a ton of analytical data, and also include our analysis of happenings and directions in the market (of course that analysis is done from our perspective and is sometimes biting to competitors but tries to be honest). Here […]
You can now send and schedule emails to your fundraisers from Email V2. This enables your peer to peer fundraising event to easily communicate with fundraisers throughout the fundraising period. If your event offers peer to peer fundraising teams, you will be able to send to 3 categories of fundraisers: To send an email to […]
With RunSignup, your event gets a free website that’s easy to design and customize. We do a lot to optimize the websites of more than 27,000 events each year, including making sure that your events are easily found online. One of the many benefits of having your events on RunSignup is that they are automatically […]
We have a great many events that use RunSignup for important causes throughout the nation. When we saw a virtual free event, Finish Eliza’s Run, to respond in a unified indignation to the death of a fellow runner, Eliza “Liza” Fletcher, we thought we share to help build awareness.
Feature Updates Added MileSplit Report Section Type and Export Function. You can now create MileSplit Exports from Reports that have MileSplit Report Sections added to them. So, if you need to generate a MileSplit Export, first you need to create a Report that includes MileSplit Report Sections for each Event you have in your Race, […]
Feature Updates Updated Loading Progress Component. We improved the loading indicator, adding progress for loading Fundraiser data separate from the Participant/Volunteer data. Added the ability to quickly edit a Preset from the Configuration setup by tapping the arrow next to the Preset Name. This should make it easier to update a currently selected Preset by […]
Email Marketing is the most valuable marketing channel for events, and RunSignup makes it easy to send unlimited emails with free and integrated Email Marketing. This blog walks through 5 of the emails your event should send – and the postponement/cancellation email that we hope you don’t have to send! Each sample email includes: Registration […]
We continue the series on strategies to Increase Registrations with Pricing strategies by focusing on ways to apply discount incentives to encourage group participation and tap into the social nature that is the foundation of endurance events. This post covers two of the approaches available for race organizers using RunSignup’s registration platform: Multi Person pricing and Group/Team discounts. Both build in incentives for participants to encourage others to participate in the event with them greatly expanding your reach.
Race Directors and Timers are invited to watch this Webinar where we provide an update on the RaceDay CheckIn app’s latest improvements and newest features, including pre-set and configuration changes. RunSignup’s Matt Avery talks through the advantages of using the app and gives practical guidance on how to set up the CheckIn app so that volunteers can efficiently use the app for processing participants.
We lowered the Reserve Holdbacks to 0% effective today. This is a very happy day and another sign of recovery in our endurance community. As you may recall we always had a normal 0% holdback (meaning we pay out when people signup), but instituted a 20% holdback at the beginning of the Pandemic. We have […]
Below is a recorded webinar on The Advantage of Fundraising. This session offers some valuable information on how fundraising can help increase revenue and registrations and how to take advantage of these tools within your RunSignup dashboard.
Below is a Timer Tip Tuesday training on RaceDay Scoring using Data Actions. This is a quick training session that walks through different what if scenarios such as automatically switching events based on check points or location reads.Â
Feature Updates Added Multi-Race Bundle Name (if applicable) to Event Name If a Participant has registered for their Event via a Multi-Race Bundle, we now show the name of the bundle in parenthesis after the Event name. For example 5k (Series Registration) or something similar. Added Bib Number Visualization to Top Right Corner of Participant View It […]
RunSignup offers many features and ways in which events can creatively encourage a greater amount of registrations for their upcoming races. This is a first in a series of blog posts to help provide specific methods to increase race registrations through pricing. Two approaches that can be used in tandem that build a sense of urgency for earlier registrations are Event Size-Based pricing and Date-Based pricing.
The following webinar provides a quick guide on how to use RaceDay Scoring for basic race scoring. This is an ideal session for timers just getting started in RaceDay Scoring or for those that would like a refresher before the busy season ahead. Step-by-step instructions on setting things up and scoring an event is covered along with a product demonstration.
Feature Updates Added FinishLynx Report Section and Auto-Save option You can now create a Report that includes a FinishLynx Report Section when you select “All” Events that will give you the ability to set up a FinishLynx Auto-Save. This Auto-Save will export .evt, .ppl, and .sch files automatically as a race is ongoing, so that […]
You can now add URLs to images in the Email Builder, enabling you to redirect email recipients to a website. This gives you additional ways beyond call to action buttons and hyperlinks to link to website content from your RunSignup emails for all of your events. When you add an image to your email, you’ll […]
RunSignup RaceDay Suite Demo At RunSignup’s recent Summer Symposium we showcased many of the products available to our customers. Below is a look at some of our RaceDay Suite products, including RaceDay Registration, RaceDay CheckIn, RaceDay Scoring, and RaceDay Results. Check out this recording where Kevin Lai walks through a quick demo of these products. […]
Why Every Race Should Consider Adding Teams Below is a recorded webinar recently held that covered the benefits of offering team/group registration options and examples of how this can be deployed using RunSignup’s features and tools available to our customers. If you are wanting to increase registrations, teams are what we like to call a […]
Feature Updates Updated USAT Export to include Participants missing state or zip codes. This would cause some international participants to not show in exports if they did not have a state or zip code provided. This will allow these participants to be included in the export data. Updated Race List sort functionality so that it […]
RunSignup Spotlight and Insights RunSignup’s Bob Bickel was recently interviewed by William Blair, a premier global boutique investment firm, to get an update on RunSignup and the industry. You can read the full report to get a pulse on the company and the industry, how RunSignup has prospered in a competitive and challenging environment, and […]
Printing Updates Added Configuration setting to automatically print after Review. This will automatically send the print job after selecting “Save and Continue” on the CheckIn confirmation page. Added Print Button to Participant Info Screen. Now you can print labels from the Participant Info screen as well as from the CheckIn Confirmation screen. This allows you […]
One of the things that a lot of companies do is “chase the deal”. They close on sales tactics and quite often “special” pricing. I’ve been at lots of companies like this, and one of my goals at RunSignup was to avoid this spiral. Create a good product for a good price and if customers […]
GiveSignup continues to invest in helping nonprofits raise more money and grow their fundraising events. Today our development team made several releases that improve the user experience for fundraisers and donors making a donation to a fundraiser. 1. Selecting a fundraiser automatically brings the donor to the Donate option. On the main fundraiser page, the […]
Feature Updates Added the ability to save Data Check Reports. You can now create and save Data Check Reports to reference later. These reports will stick around when exporting/importing a Race. Added more options for filtering the Race List. Prior to this change you could only update the filter to not show passed Races. Now […]
Race week is an exciting time for participants. It’s important for race directors to capture that momentum and get early registrations for the following year. There are a few ways that RunSignup can help depending on the approach you would like to take. Here are a couple options and recommended best practices that you can […]
We release an annual RaceTrends Report each winter to provide a thorough assessment of the state of the endurance and fundraising events industry. This year, as the industry adapts to a post-pandemic world, we pulled a reduced round of midyear data to help event organizers better understand the current state of the industry. The Data The data […]
We are excited to announce our newest team member, Erin Witzel. Erin is joining RunSignup as a developer who will first be spearheading the completion and maintenance of our new WordPress website (first step: this TicketSignup blog!). She was initially hired for the website project as a contractor, and has been inspired to stay. Over […]
This week we welcomed race directors and timers from across the country to Philadelphia for our 2022 Summer Symposium. After several years without an event, it was a joy to see so many familiar customers, meet new people in the industry, and learn about the amazing events our community is organizing. If you missed the […]
This is a guest blog written by Gerry Perez of RUNGP, an SMS (TXT) provider for endurance events. He talks about the benefits of SMS marketing, and includes some of the RunSignup customers who successfully use his service. Note: RunSignup provides txt messaging for results and emergency notifications for free, but does not allow marketing […]
This week is our first live RunSignup Symposium since the pandemic (the last one was January, 2020 in Orlando). We started these in 2014 when we were much smaller (way before most companies would think about having a conference). I thought it might be useful to write a Founder’s Corner blog about why we put […]
There are now even more ways to customize the Event Tiles on your website with a new option to add a background image to your tiles and an improved interface to manage event display settings. To get started customizing your event tiles, navigate to Race >> Registration >> Event Display Options. Click into an event […]
Feature Updates Updated Result Set Selection when Publishing Results to RunSignup. If you are adding an Auto-save and no results exist for that Event on RunSignup yet, we will default the Auto-save to create a new Result Set. If there is a single Result Set available, we will automatically select that Result Set in the […]
IMPORTANT UPGRADE NOTICE: After upgrading to this version, any presets and configurations for saved Races will need to be created again. General Updates Presets and Configurations can now be edited. Before this update you could not edit existing Presets or Configurations, you would have to create new versions of them. Now you are able to […]
Below is a Timer Tip Tuesday covering how to use RaceDay Scoring for cross country events. RunSignup’s Crisp McDonald and Roger Bradshaw walk through the different preset configurations available in RaceDay Scoring specifically for cross country events and reporting options. Also covered are the various result integrations available to timers such as TFRRS, Athletic.net, and RunSignup team results publishing.
In trying to answer the question of when participants will come back to races, we turned to Google Trends, which is a cool tool that shows the relative volume of Google Searches over time. It goes back to 2004, and looking past the seasonality, the trend line is pretty obvious: The peak year was 2013 […]
With some lingering instability in the endurance event market, the key question we are hearing from race directors is how can you help me grow my event? The good news? RunSignup offers you a multitude of tools designed to help you rebuild and grow your events. Before we dive into the tools available to you, […]
We get a lot of questions about how RunSignup can promote your event, and people are always surprised when we say we don’t promote your event − we give you the tools to promote your event. This doesn’t mean we don’t understand the importance of marketing to your event; on the contrary, event marketing is […]
Q2 2022 saw several trends: Races are down about 20% from their 2019 numbers, and 25% of races over 500 participants in 2019 are not back and likely not returning RunSignup has seen continued market share growth Registration vendors are getting very aggressive given the shrinkage in the market RunSignup / GiveSignup Peer to Peer […]
Updated database to improve stability and prevent missing/invalid ID errors. This version includes a major update to the database to fix some issues we have been seeing for a long time that would cause you to have to save Scored Events or rebuild Reports to fix them. Please note that this installation may take longer […]
Race events using the RaceDay CheckIn app are now able to print personalized participant information to create more efficient processing at packet pickup and on race day. Labels placed on the participant bibs can contain a number of custom fields, such as name, age, event the participant is doing, team name, corral, bib number, and t-shirt size. The RaceDay CheckIn app is compatible with iOS and Android devices and transmits data to the label printer using local WiFi services. RunSignup’s RaceDay CheckIn app is a free product designed for race organizers to deliver an efficient race day check-in experience and overcome typical race operations challenges.
Let’s Do This (LDT) is not a partner of RunSignup. We have heard from a number of races who use RunSignup that LDT has approached them claiming to be a partner with us. If this is the case it is a misrepresentation. There are no partner or other agreements between our companies. In fact, our […]
Running an Efficient Packet Pickup Want to know how to offer an efficient packet pickup at your next race? Watch this helpful video where RunSignup’s Kevin Lai walks you through the packet pickup at this year’s Scott Coffee Run in Moorestown, New Jersey! Some topics covered included: Dynamic bib assignments Bib management Pins for bibs […]
