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RunSignUp is Hiring Again! RunSignUp is looking to hire a new Account Manager in our office in Richmond, VA. RunSignUp is the leading provider of online race registration and management technology for the endurance event market. We help tens of thousands of races each year to manage their events and to take online race registrations. […]
We have begun adding export options to CRM Lists with a simple CSV spreadsheet and export to MailChimp. This is very simple. Once you create a list, you can pick a list and then have different options, including Export on the right. The CSV option downloads immediately. The MailChimp option requires that the MailChimp integration […]
We do a quarterly update on how things are going with RunSignUp (2016, Q1/17, Q2/17, Q3/17, 2017, Q1/18, and Q2/18). The good news is that more races, timing companies, running stores and runners continue to recommend us. And we keep putting out great technology our customers seem to like! We held our Annual RunSignUp Symposium in July, with a sell-out […]
The recent hack of 50 Million Facebook user accounts was big news in the security industry. (The link above tells you how to check to see if your Facebook account was hacked). The reason it was big news is because many websites (NOT RunSignUp) allow users to login with their Facebook ID. This generates possible […]
We captured some of our favorite presentations from the RunSignUp Symposium on video and will be gradually sharing them with all our customers and friends. This Race Director Business Session was run by Mark Harris of Adventure Enablers, and focuses on the business logistics of being race director – from concept to execution. If you […]
We hear these questions frequently: what is Customer Relationship Management (CRM)? How can it help me improve customer communications, identify missed opportunities and increase revenue for my race? Thursday, Bob and Allison are joining The Race Director HQ for a Facebook live discussion on CRM and races – the session will include a live Q&A […]
We have been doing a number of infrastructure updates over the past few weeks to improve availability, increase performance and assure security. For example, there was a major Amazon AWS outage on September 5 that took out the SQS queuing service for 1 hour and 40 minutes. Most other registration companies were offline, but our […]
The CheckIn App is one of our most popular features. The previous version of the app was used by over 1,800 races this past year to checkin over 700,000 participants. We have released a totally re-implemented native CheckIn App for iOS and Android phones and tablets (so you will need to download the new app and […]
The power of any CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool is good data that exists within a single platform. From the beginning, RunSignUp has been built with a CRM core, connecting race promotion, registration, fundraising, and RaceDay. We are busy expanding your Race CRM to increase flexibility and create more actions, but today the CRM empowers […]
EventBrite had a sparkling (pun intended!) IPO debut this week. They sold over $230M of stock and their fully diluted valuation now hovers around $3.4 Billion. Their S1 filing with the SEC provides a treasure trove of information that is very interesting to registration companies like RunSignUp. This will have implications that will impact the […]
Partners are organizations who manage multiple races. Over the next month or two we will be making a whole host of Partner Dashboard changes. You may have noticed a new skin to the dashboard was released yesterday. There are two much bigger changes coming. One is a new Race List view that we hope will […]
We first told you about our partnership with ROAD iD back in July. In August, the partnership was activated, allowing races to add a discounted ROAD iD as an add-on during registration, with incentives to the race for activating the add-on. As many of you know, ROAD iD’s purpose is to Save Lives, Provide Peace […]
Gobble Up Some Savings with RaceJoy Deliver a race with all the trimmings by offering RaceJoy’s live GPS tracking and cheer sending! We’re offering a 20% discount for races held on Thanksgiving Day or the Friday after. Gobble this up, folks, and offer an experience that would amaze any pilgrim. Your participants chose to do […]
We have added a way to easily customize Column Names/Headings as well as order on the Participant Report. For example, change this default view: to this: This first step in creating a custom report view is to Save the Report after you have selected the search criteria and fields you want: Once it is Saved, […]
There is a lot of excitement building for the RaceDay Timer Certification courses coming in January. This blog is about setting expectations for what to expect. Philadelphia – January 8, 2019 Dallas – January 15, 2019 San Francisco – January 22, 2019 Orlando – January 29, 2019 Certification means certification! This is a Pass / […]
RaceJoy is the leading mobile app for races for GPS tracking, social interaction, safety and monitoring because of the advanced technology that no one normally sees. One of the really difficult problems to solve is identifying where someone is on a course based on GPS data that is inherently a little inaccurate. This past week […]
We captured some of our favorite presentations from the RunSignUp Symposium on video and are gradually sharing them with all our customers and friends. You can check out all the presentations that have been uploaded here: https://resources.runsignup.com/symposiumpresentations/ Our latest video release is the Marketing 101 presentation by Matt Sinclair and Andrew Burke. They review creating […]
Up next in our series of Customer Highlights takes a look at an early adopter of RunSignUp: Championship Racing. You can view the full case study here, but here’s a quick overview of the challenges they were facing, and how RunSignUp helped them to find solutions: Challenge: Championship Racing had a simple challenge: they needed a […]
We do a US Registration Market Analysis every 6 months: September 2015 March, 2016 September, 2016 March, 2017 September, 2017 March, 2018 We try to improve on it with your feedback (so feel free to send suggestions or corrections to bob.bickel at runsignup.com). We do this as part of our own internal market evaluation processes […]
If you have a race that looks like it may be in the path of Hurricane Florence, you may have gotten an email from us today with some tips for communicating with and managing your participants in a questionable weather situation. But even if you’re not in Florence’s path – or likely to see any weather that […]
We are excited to welcome Melissa Mitchell to our team of dedicated Account Managers! Melissa brings endurance industry experience to our Richmond office after spending three years in a similar role at RaceIt. In the year since RaceIt closed, Melissa continued to work with technology in a customer-facing capacity; as a Customer Success Manager at […]
We have added a way to view the repeat participant counts in your participant reports. To view this information, you must first unhide the fields in the report options. You can do this by going to Participants>>View Participants. Select the Report Options drop-down menu and select Hidden Fields: Next, choose which options you would like […]
Roger Bradshaw created The Race Director, one of the two leading products (along with RunScore) used by timers to score races. It is used by about 30% of the timers in the US to score literally hundreds of races each weekend, and last year scored over 8,000,000 participants. But it was first released 29 year […]
We have released the capability to do Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA, or sometimes called 2-Step Verification) on RunSignUp. This is optional for all users (required for RunSignUp employees). MFA is currently gaining popularity as an additional layer of security. The basic idea is that in addition to your password, you use another device (typically your phone […]
We did two pretty major releases yesterday – CRM for Donations and Fundraising, and improved performance by about 10%. We also released a bunch of other things as well: Timer 24hr CSV option. USAT waiver on participant management page. Fix question default responses. Bib range search. Add DNQ option. Minor ROAD iD fixes. Store items […]
At the US Trail Running Conference in San Luis Obispo, California this last week the RaceJoy team got to connect with race directors and vendors in the trail running industry. We get a lot of great ideas for RaceJoy from this group and definitely see a growing trend towards trail running as runners seek more […]
We have begun to release CRM functionality for fundraising organizations. The RunSignUp CRM enables you to look across all of your races and build filters for Participants, Fundraisers and Donors quickly and easily. In the example above, this race has 23,076 total participants. We want to look for people who were participants from near Moorestown […]
We have released a number of performance improvements that make the RunSignUp site faster, especially for mobile users. The overall average page has dropped from about 2.5 seconds to 2.2 seconds, with sub-second response on modern computers and mobile phones with fast internet access. Every 6 months we take a look at how we can […]
Top News: Introducing Marketplace We have released Marketplace, a new hub for race directors and timers to connect with dozens of vendors and services that we have partnered with. Why Marketplace? At RunSignUp, we strive to bring choice to races. We are an open platform, ensuring that our customers can select the best options for their events, […]
Last weekend, cyclists took part in a unique event held in Troy, OH called the Tour de Donut. This bicycle event tests your ability to eat donuts, just as it does your ability to ride a bike as fast as possible. Its intended to be a fun event for all types of riders. Not only […]
We have released Marketplace, a new menu option for race directors to find dozens of vendors and services that we have partnered with to benefit our users – creating a vibrant community that adds value to our platform and to your participants. Why Marketplace? At RunSignUp, we strive to bring choice to race directors. We are […]
New Certification Program for All Timers RunSignUp announces its new RaceDay Timer Certification program with a four-city U.S. tour in January 2019. RunSignUp offers a full suite of race day products for timers, encompassing everything from scoring to live results and race day check-in to RaceJoy’s live participant tracking to help timers deliver a quality […]
This past weekend, participants of the Hell of a Half Marathon and their supporting family and friends were treated to RaceJoy’s live phone tracking and cheer sending as part of their infernal race day experience. The race is aptly named due to the challenging course marked by steep hills and the hot weather common in […]
We know that an increasing number of participants come to RunSignUp to find a race, RaceInsights data shows about 2.1% of all registrations in the past month come from the RunSignUp.com/Races page. To help this grow, we have added new ways to find races, that should also help to attract new searches from Google and […]
We captured some of our favorite presentations from the RunSignUp Symposium on video and are gradually sharing them with all our customers and friends. You can check out all the presentations that have been uploaded here: https://resources.runsignup.com/symposiumpresentations/ Our latest video release is the Email Marketing presentation by Allison Bickel and Andrew Burke. They review list […]
As part of our Team/Group sign up improvement we have made a few design and usability improvements to the user interface. We have updated the radio buttons with our new tab component and we have also created some nice messages for no team selected and team registration required. This creates a friendly interface that communicates […]
Oklahoma’s Tulsa Run Offers RaceJoy’s Live Tracking and Cheer Sending August 22, 2018 – Moorestown, NJ – Race organizers of the Tulsa Federal Credit Union Tulsa Run are offering participants and spectators the most advanced form of live tracking on race day with the mobile app, RaceJoy. Participants and their supporting family and friends will […]
As we have talked about in the past, one of the real concerns for our market is the cancellation of races and race management companies going out of business. Final Kick Events just posted this blog saying: Final Kick Events is shutting down. This was not an easy or simple decision to make. I have […]
There was a recent article in the New York Times by Louis Hyman of the Cornell ILR School talking about how much of the economy has shifted to outsourcing and temp work. “The rise of the gig economy represents liberation from the stifled world of corporate America. But for the vast majority of workers, the […]
We are in the midst of some infrastructure improvements. This is split among a variety of improvements – performance, security, maintainability, availability, and staying on the most current technology. We did a set of improvements in our caching and server connections that improved the core response time of a race page load from 140 milliseconds […]
We have expanded Multi-Race Bundles to include some more features to make signup even simpler: Team Joining Combining Questions Combining Add-Ons and supporting shipping address validation Display Customizations Granting access to non-race directors Detailed Transactions download Combining Results Notifications Corral Support Single Bib Number option These are in addition to what has been released for […]
Races can now take advantage of the ROAD iD and RunSignUp partnership for their races announced earlier. We have made this very simple to setup and for ROAD iD to become a sponsor for your race. Simply go to the National Sponsor menu item on your Race Dashboard to turn on the ROAD iD sponsorship. […]
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is technology that lets you manage your interactions with customers and potential customers. In the endurance market, CRM is evolving from a buzzword to a tangible technology that race directors need. Your participants are your customers, and you need to promote your race(s) and deliver customer service to your current, past, […]
Teams and Groups are becoming an increasingly popular way to attract participants. However, there are always questions about how to make this as simple and obvious as possible to attract the most people. On Monday, August 6, we are taking another step forward as part of our User Experience Manifesto to help races maximize the […]
Top News: What IS a CRM for Races? The hottest ticket at our 2018 RunSignUp Symposium was the session on the RunSignUp CRM, and yet, many in the endurance industry don’t really understand the term or how it can impact their business. We dedicated some blog real estate to answer the essential CRM questions: What […]
We had a bug impacting emails sent today between roughly 9:55am-10:35am ET, causing emails to be sent with recipients listed in the “To” field instead of being BCC’d. The bug initiated during a migration to the new version of SendGrid’s API; we have rolled back to the pre-deployment version, and further emails have not been […]
We captured some of our favorite presentations from the RunSignUp Symposium on video and will be gradually sharing them with all our customers and friends. We posted about RaceDay Scoring earlier today, but up first in our set of sessions led by non-RunSignUp industry professionals is our Marketing Panel. This session was run by Ryan […]
The development of RaceDay Scoring is rolling along, and one of the highlights of this year’s RunSignUp Symposium was being able to share the progress with so many experienced timers. For those of you that couldn’t make it to the Symposium, you can catch up with RaceDay Scoring on Youtube! Intro: RaceDay Scoring & RaceDay […]
Many races have multiple charity partners and complex fundraising set ups. RunSignUp’s integrated fundraising and donations solution is now even more flexible with the ability to enable fundraising, donations, and charities on a per event basis. In this use case, the race has a 5K and 10K, as well as charity bibs for each race. […]
Moorestown, NJ and Worcester, MA – RaceInsure and RunSignUp announced today an offering designed for races to protect them in the event of cancellation due to weather and other extreme conditions. RaceInsure is a distance running and walking race cancellation insurance program that was built by race directors, for race directors. The insurance is simple, and […]
