December’s Top News
2017 Year in Review: As the year comes to a close, we are doing our annual look back at the progress made throughout the last 12 months, and setting a roadmap for the coming year. Here are some highlights:
- 100% Uptime: For the second year in a row, we’ve maintained 100% uptime – even with 1,590 upgrades to the system – and completed 100% on-time payments aside from a small bug that impacted 19 customers for a total of $646.
- Business Update: We added approximately 800,000 registrations in 2017, bringing us to 4.2 million registrations across 15,000 races. We attribute this growth to the shift of focus from a simple registration system to a full race management platform with technology tools for an entire race lifecycle – promotion, registration, fundraising, and race day.
- 2017 Achievements: We won’t list out all 1,590 upgrades to the system, but here are a few of the ones we are most excited about: RaceInsights analytics for all races, CRM & Profile user experience updates, Sponsor Management platform, RaceDay Scoring, RaceJoy Race Monitoring, and PCI Level 1 Compliance.
- 2018 Plans: much of the updates made in 2017 were laying the groundwork for a big 2018. Some of the things you have to look forward to include: new race website templates & custom domains, automated Facebook ads to custom audiences, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) improvements, and an enhanced User Experience (see: our User Experience Manifesto).
Race Website New Template Beta: Soon after the New Year, you’ll see a major upgrade to your Race Websites, providing every race with a secondtemplate with a more modern design and a lot of flexibility. The new layout will be released as an option that is chosen in the new Race Theme page on the dashboard (Race -> Race Page -> Race Theme). You can test out the new templates in Beta on one of our test servers now: https://test3.runsignup.com/. We will initially default to the legacy template, with the new one as an opt-in choice, but will transition to a default of using the new template (with the option to continue to use the legacy version). We’re looking to introduce additional templates throughout the year, as well as supporting custom domains. The ultimate goal is to have website capabilities flexible and powerful enough that you do not need to maintain a separate website, thus eliminating the need to make information updates in two places.
Race Director Resources
RaceInsights Into Bayshore Marathon: Bayshore Marathon, a very popular marathon, half marathon, and 10K in Traverse City, MI, opened at 9:00amon December 1 with a crush of people waiting to register. This year, RaceInsights gave them an inside peek into what was happening. In the early hours after registering, they could see that email they sent accounted for 649 registrations and 10,000 page views. Additionally, they found that Google accounted for nearly half of their registrations, and Bing surprisingly outpaced Facebook. They also saw a strong showing from several RunSignUp affiliate calendars like HalfMarathons.net, RunningInTheUSA.com, and Playmakers Running Store calendar widget, suggesting that there is value to the calendars built for affiliates automatically off of the RunSignUp race listings (with no additional work by the race).
Make sure you’re checking your RaceInsights to learn more about where your participants are coming from. Need some help interpreting your data? We have some tips and pointers included in our RaceInsights e-Guide.
ICYMI – December Webinars: RunSignUp developer and digital marketing guru, Andrew Burke, took the lead in the final two Endurance Event Education Webinars of 2017, breaking down the new RaceInsights analytics found on your race dashboard, and walking through the process of creating and using Facebook Custom Audiences. If you missed them, it’s not too late! Recorded versions are available here:
RaceJoy Raves
Custom Content for Races Now Available in RaceJoy: RaceJoy has recently released new content capabilities for race organizers providing the ability to add custom content in three key areas: general race information, schedule of events, and frequently asked questions. All are self-administered by the race with flexible content and linking capability, and edits can be made at any time.
News Alert: Price Changes for RaceJoy in 2018: Starting 1/1/18, RaceJoy will have a new simplified pricing model. We are moving away from the pricing band approach to a consistent $0.50 per registered participant, with a $350 minimum for events that have courses under 50 miles. Pricing covers all participants, spectators, race operations, race day monitoring, and sponsor placement opportunities.
Philly Breaks RaceJoy Usage Records. Youse Can’t Get Any Better Than This! The 2017 AACR Philadelphia Marathon‘s participants and supporting family and friends fully embraced RaceJoy’s technology and broke all RaceJoy’s usage records with 19,000 participants and spectators using the app to track and send cheers to runners. More than 24,000 motivational cheers were sent over the course of the weekend!
Timer Talk
- RaceDay Scoring: Changes to enable some bridges to the new application, currently under development, to begin enabling you to score your race in either or both applications. “Timing Points” has been renamed to “Timing Locations”.
- RunSignUp Integration: Mapping allowed from multiple RD divisions to a single RSU event.
- Race Result Chip System: Changes in the RD Results Import to accommodate improvements in the latest Race Result connector software.
- Cross Country: Updates to eliminate a gender prompt when all in the division are the same gender, ability to set Cross Country scoring displacement rules by division, enhanced XC finish line list to allow limiting the list to a specific count of finishers, and more.
- Team Relay: Major improvements to team relay reporting.
RunSignUp News
RunsignUp History Timeline: As we close out our 8th year, we took a stroll through memory lane to look back at how our little company began and has grown. It all started with a blog post for a running store looking for a developer; today, we employ 31 full-time, offer a suite of tools to help with your full race lifecycle, and were used by 15,000+ races and 4.2 million registrants in 2017.
Despite all that growth, there is much that has not changed. We have some tenants and philosophies that were put in place at the founding of Building Blocks of Success: RunSignUp, and have carried through to today. We operate by a set of Guiding Principles: we work hard, we’re always learning, we have fun, and we are a team. We maintain efficiency by instilling employees with both trust and responsibility. We run our technology stack on Amazon AWS, and model much of our business operation off of them, as well. As a part of our project to document the history of our company (above), we also documented the evolution – and consistency – of the RunSignUp Philosophy, dating back to the very early years.
Help Wanted – Sales Rep in Richmond, VA: We’re hiring again! We’re looking for a Sales Representative to join our fast growing company – the ideal candidate has experience working in inside sales in a high volume, fast-paced environment. We’d like someone who is fast-learning, understands our Guiding Principles, is self-motivated, and has professionalism, perseverance, and good follow-up and communication skills. The position will be located in our Richmond, VA office.
Stay current with all our news, updates, and best practices on Facebook and our Blog.
May all your races run well!
– The RunSignUp Team
The RunSignUp Monthly Newsletter helps Race Directors, Timers, Running Stores, and Club Officers understand how to use online registration to improve their races and running clubs. We also provide updates on our registration service, RunSignUp. This service provides race management tools, race check-in, kiosks, results, running club memberships, and more.