Elevating endurance and fundraising communities with the art of technology.
The biggest US running day of the year had an impressive showing in 2022, with 756,894 people participating in 730 races across the country and raising more than $1.8 million dollars for charities. That represents record participation on the platform, likely due to both an increase in market share and a strong rebound of the […]
Over the last couple weeks we’ve had a few nonprofits report issues with their Facebook Fundraiser integration. Meta has undergone some changes over the past month and our previous contacts are no longer with the company. We are still waiting on Meta to release a fix to the Fundraiser API and provide our team access […]
We had over 750,000 people sign up for 730 Turkey Trots who used our platform this Thanksgiving. It is by far the busiest day of the year that produces huge load on our systems with last minute registrations, timers posting results and photos and people checking directions and start times and results. We did not […]
As with other Founders Corner blogs, I like to write these blogs to help myself make sure I am thinking about things clearly, as well as communicate important information that I want available to all employees and customers so we can get feedback and we all understand the path forward. I’ve written about pieces of […]
On this Thanksgiving Eve, we wanted to take a little time to say our thanks as a team! Here are 20 things we’re thankful about this year. 1. Thanks to Our Customers (that’s YOU!) First and foremost, we are SO THANKFUL for our customers. Our business only exists because of your business, and we’re thankful […]
Following up on our recent introduction of Deduplication Options for Email v2, we wanted to go behind the scenes to explain how our email delivery system is being further optimized. Enterprise level email delivery is much harder than it may appear. Like many things with an internet based product, we have to spend a lot […]
Asics announced the acquisition of a leading European registration provider, Njuko. This is in addition to their other acquisitions of RunKeeper (training app), Race Roster (Canada and US registration) and RegisterNow (Australia registration). Congratulations to Pierre Duvelleroy and his team, who have built a good quality company who operates the right way with reasonable fees […]
There are now 3 deduplication options for Email V2: You can select your preferred deduplication option on the Recipients page where you select Email Recipient lists to receive an email. We will walk through each deduplication option in more detail. Email, Name, and Placeholders We recommend using this setting for all race communications that use […]
As race organizers, you know what it takes to put on a race and all the efforts involved on the backend leading up to race day and on the big day. But what do participant’s experience when they interact with all those great services you’ve set up? This webinar covers this topic and specifically dives into what participants experience as they go through the various RaceDay tools available for events who use RunSignup’s registration. Since these integrate with one another on the backend, participants receive a more streamlined and connected experience.
Part of Bob’s continued ramblings. Eventbrite has had a history of overstating things a bit too much. This blog digs into the details of how Eventbrite is: There are plenty of customers who will begin to understand these impacts in the coming years and why they will move to TicketSignup for our free websites that they […]
American Express had some outages on Friday night, November 18, 2022. About 10-15% of credit card transactions on our platform use American Express credit cards, and some of those transactions took extra time and some failed. When we try to process a transaction that fails, our processor (Adyen) gives us a status code back. Sometimes […]
Part of Bob’s continued ramblings. This one covers an overview of the how and why we do reviews and our compensation. Annual Reviews We like to do reviews and compensation adjustments on an annual basis. There are a number of positives around doing this on an annual basis: Reviews Over the past several years we have […]
Email V2 stats now show in RaceInsights Analytics. This gives you even more insight into how your emails drive website views, registration numbers, and revenue. RunSignup email is free and you can send unlimited emails. However, it’s important to balance frequency and quality – if you send too many emails with poor content, your contacts […]
Part of Bob’s continued ramblings. I’ve been asked a number of times in the past couple of days, including by my daughters (who know I am a Swiftie) if we could have handled the load that Ticketmaster could not? The simple answer is kind of. Seating Our biggest limitation is seating charts. We do not do […]
he webinar below covers RunSignup’s new announcer screen for race organizers and timers to use on race day. Powered by RaceDay Scoring, the announcer screen streams personalized participant information as they cross timing points on the course. This newest feature enables race announcers to make timely personal public recognition of race participants- an honored tradition of on-site endurance events.
Registrations for the 2023 RunSignup Winter Roadshow are open! As we announced in September, we are foregoing our traditional Symposium this year in favor of smaller events that allow us to reach more race directors and timers all around the country. We’re starting off with eleven Roadshow Stops between January and March, and you can […]
Part of Bob’s continued ramblings. There have been tons of layoffs recently in the technology sector. The major factor driving this is a shift from investor perspectives of value on growth vs. profitability. And that was driven by very low interest rates. That is not the point of this blog, but just to follow that […]
Your race website is automatically created and sync’ed with all the information you input when filling out the race wizard. A fully functional website helps organize your race information in a structured and easy to find format while also allowing you to add custom branding to make your website eye-catching and uniquely yours. In addition […]
RunSignup offers a wealth of free products and features events can take advantage of to support these efforts and we know many event organizers may not be aware of all that is available to them. So, to help our events we host webinars that focus in on using the tools that specifically support increasing registration numbers. We’ve also shared many best practices and tips for approaches we know that work.
Feature Updates Updated Membership Display to show even if there is no Membership Number. Some Memberships at RunSignup are set up without the concept of a Membership Number existing. In this case, we will show the membership and whether or not they are a member instead of hiding any membership that does not have a […]
We did a quick check-in on how some of the data is looking this year so far for registration (November 7, 2022). We have been tracking how far races have recovered post pandemic. We also have done an annual wrap-up after turkey trots are done. Last year there were 617,000 participants across 640 Turkey Trots […]
RaceDay Scoring now offers new external display options. This Timer Tip Tuesday covers how timers can make use of HTML Scroll Exports.
Many endurance events across the country are continuing to see registration numbers are lower than pre-pandemic levels – especially if you are a mid-sized event. Yet your cost to put on events is going up. This webinar focuses in on ways you can rebuild participation levels and increase registrations. There are many tools at RunSignup that are free and effective for marketing your race and encouraging registrations with strategic pricing discounts.
We have been tracking a data point this year where we look at a cohort of races that were on our platform in both 2019 and 2022 by the month the race occurred. Meaning we looked at races that happened in October of this year (2022), and compared if they were also on our platform […]
Ultra distance events come with many of the same needs as typical race events like 5Ks and half marathons, but they also have very unique requirements and things to consider. For example, many ultra events don’t use a timer to officially score the race due to either the size of the registrations or the conditions of the course. However, events still need a way to provide finisher data to participants. Ultra event organizers address these unique situations through a combination of creativity, technology and sometimes by applying the good old fashioned approach to endurance experiences like manually writing down participants’ finish times.
Happy Halloween! In addition to the costumes and candy, we like to celebrate with a festive Halloween themed fun run. Take a look at some of the spooktacular races that happened this past weekend. 1. Monster Dash, Leesburg FL Whether you want a long run or you want to participate from afar, this Monster Dash […]
We are excited to announce the release of the Event List for Organization Websites. This first release lets you feature upcoming and past events on your organization website with flexible layouts and rules to determine which events show and which events do not show. The Event List is perfect for timers and organizations with multiple […]
RunSignup’s API offers industry technology providers an easy way to integrate their technology into our platform to provide increased value and a seamless experience for both race organizers and participants. We are pleased to share RunGo’s recent announcement of their integration with RunSignup’s platform.
There is now an option to disable the header in RunSignup’s Email V2. While we recommend including the default Sign Up button in your marketing communications, your event may not want a heading for emails to registrants regarding event communications, like a Pre-Event email. To disable the header, click the gear setting in the email […]
We’ve just launched a new announcer tool that gives race announcers immediate access to participant information. RaceDay Scoring now offers an announcer screen that streams personalized participant information as they cross timing points on the course. This newest feature enables race announcers to make timely personal public recognition of race participants- an honored tradition of on-site endurance events.
Below is a recorded webinar covering how Race Result timing hardware integrates with RunSignup’s RaceDay Scoring software. Race Result’s Bryce Longacre and RunSignup’s Crisp McDonald walk through some best practices when using Race Result timing hardware, creating exporters in Race Result software, and how to correctly connect to RaceDay Scoring. A product demo rounds things out to help illustrate what you can expect to see when you use the two products.
RunSignup is working on a new company website that we will be launching in January 2023. While stock photos are ok, we would love to feature YOUR event photos on our website. If you’d like to see your event on the RunSignup website, please upload your photos to this shared Google Photo album: https://photos.app.goo.gl/k7ym8TeMh8aPVXe56. When […]
It is that time of year again! The busiest season for the endurance industry and, for many ,the biggest race event of the year. To help our event organizers prepare and make the most of the tools available to them at RunSignup, we hosted this Turkey Trot Tech Prep webinar.
Over the past couple of months every RunSignup employee went out to volunteer at an event. The idea is that we want to make sure our entire company understands what an event director does – to feel the countless tasks, the stress, but also the joy of putting on an event. We went to everything […]
We are pleased to announce the new ability for race participants to search for events offering non-binary gender features. RunSignup currently has more than 2,500 events offering a non-binary gender option. This is RunSignup’s latest effort to better support inclusive and flexible gender options within the event registration process. The new search capability follows several other inclusive innovations such as the ability for events to add a non-binary gender category. This is then able to integrate seamlessly with other RunSignup products like RaceDay Scoring so that gender divisions publish official results for a non-binary category.
The Midstate Massive Ultra Trail event, a point-to-point trail race with distances of 100, 50 and 30 miles in Massachusetts, has offered RaceJoy since its inception of 2019. This popular ultra New England event attracted close to 350 participants this last weekend and 78% opted to use Runsignup’s RaceJoy’s tracking and spectator engagement features. Each participant had about 5 people tracking them in RaceJoy and sending them cheers. An impressive 1,600 people used the RaceJoy app during the event.
There are now fundraiser email replacement tags for Email V2. Using these dynamic replacement tags with the Email V2 fundraiser recipient list gives your peer to peer fundraising event more power to automate and customize communications with your fundraisers. We make it easy to use fundraiser replacement tags with a dropdown tags menu for fundraising […]
With the release of our new Mobile Timing App, we have extended our complete results system to really simplify and expand the results process for Ultra race directors and the participant experience. Of course, RunSignup is well known for our full suite of RaceDay technology – Bib Management, CheckIn App, Free Photos, Free Results, Live […]
The Donation Report has a new update that shows the breakdown between transactional (online) donations and manual (offline) donations. To view, navigate to Donations >> Reports >> Donations on your dashboard. You will see the breakdown in the top summary. It’s also easy to view manual vs online donations at the individual donation level. The column Manual […]
Event timers are invited to watch the Timer Tip Tuesday covering RaceDay Scoring latest updates for Cross Country events.
Q3 2022 saw several trends in our business: We share our high level numbers and thoughts on the market and technology advances on a quarterly and yearly basis – 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, Q1 2022, Q2 2022. RunSignup Quarterly Numbers We had a record quarter as we continue to benefit from strong word of mouth about our technology platform […]
Timers can now take advantage of RunSignup’s new RaceDay Mobile Timing app as a back up for chip timed events or as an alternate timing solutions for smaller events with limited budgets or inability to have timing equipment on the course. It is an ideal solution for endurance events such as Ultra distances, track and field, cross country, running or cycling events and water events, and is an alternative option to Time Machine and WebScorer. The recorded session below provides timers with an overview of the products features and how-to instructions.
Our Volunteer system and Voucher capability might be the perfect combo for many events looking for ways to reward their volunteers. This is especially convenient for race management companies who have multiple events each year and you may reward a volunteer with a free (or maybe half off) event of their choosing if they volunteer […]
Ultra Running Magazine has started up a new Weekend Update email that is really packed full of news, results, interviews and links to lots of other information the Ultra and Trail community will love. You can see the updates here. And signup for the newsletter here. Here is an example snippet: And the weekly results […]
Events are the best way for breweries to increase foot traffic, drive sales, engage with existing customers, and get new people to your brewery. While the beer industry grew just 1% in 2021, the craft brewer industry continues to experience higher growth rates, expanding by 8% in 2021 according to the 2021 Annual Craft Brewing Production Report. […]
UltraRunning Magazine, known as “the voice of the sport” since 1981, has recently completed an integration with the RunSignup Results API to automate the population of results data on their free and open Ultra Results Listing service. UltraRunning Magazine provides race results and also curates individual results across all registration and results platforms. Here are […]
We are very excited to announce RunSignup’s RaceDay Mobile Timing App for timing of smaller events and backup for chip-timed events. Through the convenient use of Android and Apple phones and tablets, event timers are able to use the free RaceDay Mobile Timing app to log finish times and the order of finishers through the app. The app works in conjunction with RunSignup’s results platform for real-time results publication. This is ideal for timing smaller endurance events such as Ultra distances, track and field, cross country, running or cycling events and water events. In addition, the RaceDay Mobile App is a valuable backup solution – similar to Time Machine devices – for larger events and for top finisher verification.
If you have a race that looks like it may be in the path of Hurricane Ian, below are some tips for managing your event in a questionable weather situation. But even if you’re not in Ian’s path – or likely to see any weather that extreme, a communication plan for extreme weather can be valuable to all races. We encourage events to have a contingency plan in place that can be activated when needed.
As described last week, we have a planned upgrade happening on our databases this week. We have done a number of tests and are hopeful for a quick and non-impactful transition. We also have planned and tested fallbacks as well. We will be doing the Database Shard (less important database tables) on Tuesday morning, and […]
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 […]
