Top News: 2018 Year in Review
We’re heading into our 10th year! 2018 was an amazing year for us, with 17,686 races using our services to register 5M+ participants and process more than $200,000,000 in transactions. The numbers don’t tell the whole story though – it’s our technology that drives our business, and we delivered some big projects that will help our customers for years to come. Highlights include the new Partner Dashboard, advances in our Race CRM, Multi-Race Bundles, and a fresh RaceDay CheckIn App. As productive as the year was, we’re not done – in 2019, we’re looking forward to the impact of RaceDay Scoring, adding custom domains and websites, continuous improvement of CRM, and a host of new fundraising tools.
Best of the Blog: Race Director Resources
RaceDay Scoring Released!
After twenty-two months of development and user testing, RaceDay Scoring production release is now available for timers to score events across the country. Our next generation scoring solution is hitting the road in January, with four stops to get timers RaceDay Certified in RaceDay Scoring, RaceJoy, and more! All sites are likely to sell out.
Custom Partner Dashboard Charts
Now available for large race organizations with Partner Accounts: a customizable dashboard. Your options include enhanced reporting, with quick cards highlighting your most crucial data, and instant year-over-year reports. Not a partner? The technology that built this dashboard will be coming to more dashboards in 2019!
Private Event Registration Option
If you offer private registration that is only available to a certain group of people, this is your solution! With easy setup, you can you hide a registration option for most participants while getting a simple URL to share that gives access to the registration option where appropriate.
Interview with Mark Harris from Adventure Enablers
Mark Harris, the Founder and Race Director of Adventure Enablers sat down with us to talk about the participants they serve. He breaks down how they use RunSignup’s Race CRM, promotional tools, and RaceDay Photos to enhance their race experience.
Continuous Branding
And the Retirement of Ron…
Yup, that’s a new logo! After nine years of growth, we took some time to reflect on our mission and values. From that exercise, we are updating our visual representation to express our dedication to the art of technology and our bold philosophy on crafting software that is open, flexible, and built for the long term. Our website and blog have some updates now, and you’ll see more in the coming months!
While we are excited about moving our brand forward, the RunSignup team has been sad to drop Ron Synup, our loyal mascot, from the logo. But never fear! Ron is still alive, well, and happily heading off to retirement.
Marketing Corner
How We Grow Turkey Trots
The number of Turkey Trots is increasing nationwide, but we also see growth in participation in existing Thanksgiving races on RunSignup. How? Viral marketing tools like email marketing (16.5 million emails sent!), Referral Rewards (16,000+ November referred registrations), and Groups & Teams (20-30% join a team). We have tips to grow your race, too!
Quick Promotion Ideas to Grow Your Race 1-18%
It’s now easier to find and implement some of our most proven, successful race promotion tools with our revamped Step 7 of the wizard. Now, with a simple switch, you can turn on automated incomplete registration emails, price increase emails, and referral rewards refunds during the race creation process – and watch your race grow!
6% of Races over 500 Die
Why worry about marketing? Races do fall away! Over the past year, we’ve seen about 6% of races over 500 die. Continued innovation and promotion of your event ensures you aren’t part of that 6%.
Let’s Do This (Guest Blog)
Constantine Louloudis from Let’s Do This wrote us a guest blog detailing their marketing services for the endurance industry. Their emphasis: focusing on low-intent traffic who have not decided on a race.
RunSignUp News
2018 Availability Report
As of today, this is the third year in a row we have had 100% uptime! Highlights of that success include a major database migration, infrastructure improvements, monthly updates for security, and performance enhancements to lower the average user wair.
Development Help Wanted
We’re hiring! As we head into 2019, we are looking for candidates to join our development team – specifically, two 10X developers who love to code, love endurance, and will be comfortable on a fast-moving, highly talented team with broad responsibility to get projects done.
Welcome, Brian Flynn!
Our customer team has grown (again)! In December, we welcomed Brian Flynn to our Richmond, VA office as a Sales Representative. Brian joins us fresh off an active coaching career at Bridegwater College, and brings behind-the-scenes race experience to the job.
Payment Delay
Our Processor for Advanced Payments (Vantiv, now Worldpay) had an incident on 11/27, leading to delays in payments for Daily Payment Accounts on our Advanced Payment Platform. Also: race payments are delayed a day or two during the holidays due to bank closures!
