Why RunSignUp in 2018
Here is a quick 11 slide summary of why so many races are moving to RunSignUp.
Updated Participant Report
One of the most frequently used pages for race directors is the View Participants page. And now as part of our UX Manifesto, we have updated it. We have put the information closer to the top by condensing the confusing multiple rows of information at the top. We still give you full access to all […]
Expanded Strava Integration
We have received great feedback on the Strava integration. Races love the fact they can extend the meaning of their race from just race day into the training part of the race – thus extending the race brand and meaning. Races also appreciate that Strava is providing sponsor dollars when new users sign up for […]
Quick Link for Legacy Check-In
We have made it simpler to give volunteers access to the legacy version of the check-in app (not the dedicated mobile phone-based check-in app). Previously, you had to grant them access to the race or sign them all into your own account. We now have a specific, secure URL that each race can create and […]
A Better Race Website
Update: The recorded replay of Build a Better Website Webinar is now available. A race website is an ambassador for your event, telling the world what your race is about and why they should participate… but building and maintaining an independent race website can be time consuming and expensive. RunSignUp race websites solve many of the […]
The Declining Future of Widgets
Over the next year we will be “deprecating” our widgets. As the Java programming language has defined: “You may have heard the term, “self-deprecating humor,” or humor that minimizes the speaker’s importance. A deprecated class or method is like that. It is no longer important. It is so unimportant, in fact, that you should no longer use it, […]
WICLAX Timing Software Integrates with RunSignUp
WICLAX is timing and scoring software popular in Europe. We met them at the RFID conference, and they are expanding into the US and wanted to integrate with RunSignUp. We pointed them to the RunSignUp Open API documentation in February, and they have it all working in May! The recently announced this in their blog post. […]
RaceTrends: When Should I Close Registration?
Answer: You should never close registration. Registration Timeline by Race Distance Our 2017 look at when runners register showed a familiar curve to that of 2016: an early spike leading to a drop and a plateau, followed by another sharp climb. There is some clear differentiation based on race distance – most notably, the early registration […]
Custom Source Tracking Now on Dashboard
We have added the Custom Source Tracking to be visible right on your dashboard. This enables you to track specific promotional activities like Facebook posts and ads, partner websites, newsletter, expo booths, etc. to see what is having a good return. This is shown on an aggregate basis on the dashboard: And if you click […]
Passing Referral Codes to MailChimp
RunSignUp Referral Rewards Program is one of the best ways to increase viral participation. You can reward participants to promote your race by offering them partial or full refunds when they get X number of their friends to sign up for your race. Now we make it simple for races that use our MailChimp integration […]
The Largest Ten-Mile Road Race in the U.S.A. Offers RaceJoy
Broad Street Run Delivers on Race Day Experience May 2, 2018 – Moorestown, NJ – RunSignUp’s product, RaceJoy, the leading race day tracking mobile application, is being offered for participants and spectators of the 39th annual Blue Cross Broad Street Run. On May 6, 2018 in Philadelphia, participants of the largest ten-mile road race will […]
Lots of Little Things II (actually 54)
We are always pushing out new software (over 1,500 times last year!). It may seem like we write a lot of blog posts, but we could do a whole bunch more. We wrote earlier about how we do lots of little things, and we just went thru another batch this week. In addition to the […]
RunSignUp, Facebook, or SEO: What’s Most Effective for Your Race Marketing?
RaceInsights is helping races understand where their participants are coming from. It is also helping us see an overall aggregate picture across all races that use RunSignUp. This allows us to see what is working across all races. Obviously, the most important source is a race’s own website. With 15,000 races, there is a huge […]
Custom Source Tracking for RaceInsights
We are introducing a major new feature for RaceInsights – custom source tracking. This gives races the ability to track the ROI on specific campaigns – such as Facebook ads, race promotions on other sponsor or running store websites, or emails sent outside of the RunSignUp email marketing system. As an example, Bob posted this […]
Strava Club Integration
As part of our partnership with Strava, we have added an integration with Strava Clubs. This means that your race can create a Strava Club, and then designate that club in RunSignUp. Once the connection is made, then existing Strava members will be redirected to your Strava Club page when they click on one of […]
RunSignUp Symposium: What is Timer Day?
As we creep up on the 2018 RunSignUp Symposium, one questions we’ve heard is this: What exactly IS Timer Day? In contrast to Tuesday’s mixed educational sessions that contain content for both race directors and timers, Timer Day (Wednesday, July 18th) is an interactive education and networking opportunity specifically for the timers in attendance. Timer Day is flexible – […]
Create and Join Team Buttons
As part of our Team improvements, we have decided to separate out the Create and Join Team options into two separate buttons.
RunHostRaces: Life, Racing and the pursuit of Travel!
Guest Blog by Elise White, Founder and CEO of RunHostRaces Runners often manage upcoming races, traveling budgets & training plans throughout the year. Can it be more simple and affordable? Do you find yourself looking for discount deals or roommates for race weekend? Are nightly hotel rates a bit more than what you want to spend? […]
RunSignUp April Newsletter
Top News: Participant CRM Notes Throughout the last year, we have gradually expanded the CRM capabilities at the core of your RunSignUp participant management, making it easy to view current and previous data about participants from a single participant report. Now, you can also track your interactions with them via Notes, a text field that allows race […]
UX Update: New Race Wizard
We have released a major update to our race wizard. Here is a quick overview of what was included in this update: Refresh the look of the wizard with a clean modern design. Improve the usability and flow of the wizard. We scrutinized each UI element for improvements. Remove elements that are not needed in […]
Kentucky Derby Festival Galloped with RaceJoy!
People galloped through the Kentucky Derby Festival miniMarathon and Marathon with RaceJoy! The Kentucky Derby Festival is the biggest party of the spring with more than 1.5 million people attending over 70 events. Many people don’t realize that the Kentucky Derby is filled with a weekend filled with festivities, and RaceJoy was fortunate enough to […]
RaceJoy Launches New Design of Setup Wizard
We are happy to announce we’ve redesigned our setup wizard screens to make the process easier and to ensure readability outdoors on race day. Using more vibrant, contrasting colors, you can now get race day ready on site, even on the sunniest of days. We’re excited by the new improvements and think you will be […]
35+ Years of Development into RunSignUp
We just did a quick calculation, and we have 35 person years of software development put into RunSignUp so far. We have 12 people in development now, so we should add about another 30% to our existing functionality over the next year (although things slow down as you get bigger). The good news is there […]
Team Invites
Team Captains can easily invite friends and family to join their team with Team Member Invites. Emails with a customizable invitation message and a direct link to join your team can be sent via RunSignUp or your personal email so that your friends can easily sign up for your team. There are a couple of […]
Team Captain Options Added
Race Directors can now give Captains the ability to do several things: Allow Team Type to be changed. If there are multiple team types, like a 2 person or a 4 person team. Note that price differences will be ignored. Change Team Gender. For example change from a Male only team to a Co-ed team. […]
RaceJoy Issues at Glass City
UPDATE (4/30/2018): In addition to the steps we discussed below, we also did a refactoring of the code. We implemented a new model to reduce the processing needed to setup new participants and spectators. This new code was used this weekend for several races, including the Kentucky Derby Marathon. We had 2.2 Million configuration records […]
Updated Payment Account Requirements
As part of our ongoing efforts to improve our financial and security processes, we are instituting additional controls on new payment accounts. This involves collecting additional information on owners and requiring information be entered by individuals with significant control over the entity. As we have discussed, we are part of the banking network, and require […]
TXT Infrastructure Improvements
We recently were approved by the telecom carriers to have our own Short Code to support results notifications and emergency txt services for races. We have been using a shared short code service provider. Having our own short code assures us of having the highest bandwidth available as well as continual service from all mobile […]
New Login/SignUp Page
As part of our UX Manifesto, we have redesigned the login/signuppage.
Team Soft Caps and More Team Features
We have added several new features for Groups or Teams. Event Soft Caps The first one is “Soft Caps”. This is very useful for wave races, for example, obstacle course races. The basic idea is that you may have a cap of the number of people in a wave, but you want their friends to […]
Annual Jeff Bezos Amazon Letter – High Expectations
Jeff Bezos Annual Amazon_Letter is out. We have written about it in 2015, 2016 and 2017 since Amazon is a major role model for RunSignUp, as well as the infrastructure that runs our business. As usual, he covers a bunch of amazing statistics. Like AWS Cloud Computing is now a $20 Billion (with a “B”) […]
Specific Relay Team Legs & Unique Questions
We have added a powerful new capability to custom questions – having a unique answer. This is very useful for races who want to specify which participant is doing each leg – for example Bob is doing leg 1, Jeff is doing leg 2, Meredith is doing Leg 3. As each of these people sign […]
Endurance Relays Offer Live Tracking with RaceJoy
We are seeing an increase in interest for long distance endurance relay events where runners can share in a challenging, memorable experience together. With this, we’ve been doing a great deal of work with RaceJoy to deliver the features that the teams and that race organizers want that are specific to the unique nature involved […]
RunSignUp Accepting Applications for the 2018 Community Grant
Moorestown, NJ – RunSignup is now accepting applications for their 2018 Community Grant Program. The program, in its third year, awards a $10,000 contribution to endurance-related nonprofit organizations. Organizations can be nominated for the RunSignUp Community Grant here through June 15, 2018. The grant supports charities that promote the endurance industry; for example, local youth running programs, training funds for athletes, or the collection of running shoes for runners in developing countries. Requirements for applicants include: All applicants must be a 501(c)3 Non-Profit All nominated organizations must have […]
RunSignUp CRM Expands to Include Participant Notes
Moorestown, NJ – RunSignUp, the leading technology provider for races in the US, has released an update to its CRM (Customer Relationship Management) that allows race organizers to better track and manage their participants. The CRM is the core of RunSignUp’s participant management capabilities, creating a single hub for organizers to access all participant data […]
Hogeye Marathon is in RaceJoy. It’s a pretty pig deal!
This weekend, the Hogeye Marathon & Relays is taking things to the next level by offering RaceJoy’s advanced tracking and interactive race day features in its 42nd running. With the addition of RaceJoy, participants can get an extra motivational lift by knowing others are tracking them, receiving live continual progress updates and fun, encouraging cheers […]
RaceTrends: Are You Asking For the “Right” Donations?
It’s no secret that the endurance industry is BIG business for charities large and small. While your local charity 5K will likely find that turning a race into a profitable endeavor is a lot harder (and requires a lot more sponsors) than it looks, it is possible to raise money through your events. Fundraising Event 101: […]
RunSignUp CRM Adds Participant Notes
In an ongoing effort to help race directors optimize their relationships with participants, we are adding Notes to the RunSignUp CRM. This is very useful to mark notes of why you might have given a refund to a person, or that a person needs special assistance, or is a VIP. Notes are easily added from […]
techgirlz Workshop at RunSignUp!
RunSignUp UX developer Meredith Klein is heading up our first RunSignUp-hosted techgirlz workshop on May 23, 2018. The workshop is for any middle school girls local to our Moorestown office who are interested in learning about creating a website via WordPress. Some details: In this workshop, students will create their own website using WordPress. They […]
Easy Images in Emails!
RunSignUp has just made it easy to include your own images in our Email Marketing system! No longer will adding images to emails require knowledge of HTML hosting images. elsewhere; they can now be added directly into the email editor. To include images: After clicking on the new image icon, you can click on the […]
CSV Transformation Tool
We have released a CSV transformation tool to assist with data importing. It is one of our utilities we make public along with a CSV Merge and an Elfscore converter available at RunSignUp.com/Utilities. The new merge utility reads the header of each column and displays them in order as shown below. The transformation tool has […]
Instagram Integration Changes
Due to changes in the APIs from Instagram, we will be removing the “Instagram User Widget” and “Instagram Hashtag Widget” from our custom content pages. What’s Happening: Instagram shut down several of their APIs that we have used to gather Instagram media to display on race, club, and partner websites. Their replacement APIs are not yet available […]
Featured Customer: Race Day Events
We’re kicking off an updated series of Customer Highlights with a look at one of the partners we’ve worked with since 2014: Race Day Events. 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: Race Day Events’ […]
Privacy and Business Models
One of the very first concepts of RunSignUp was that we were NOT in the advertising business. This led to the corollary decision that we did not own or co-own customer data. We made this decision for several reasons. First, we felt it set up natural conflicts of interest. Why would one race want an […]
Easy Images for Race Websites
We have added an easy way for you to include images in your custom content sections of race websites and partner websites. We have added an image upload capability to the editor we use in the Custom Content section. This will be expanded soon to include other areas where we use that editor, such as […]
Club Member Numbers
We have (finally!) made an often repeated request to enable clubs to use specific member numbers that do not change each year. We have given a ton of options, as there seem to be a lot of different ways each club wants to administer their member numbers. Combined with some report restructuring and the new […]
Spring Cleaning Part 2: Club Dashboard!
Hi All, We’ve done some more spring cleaning, and applied our new dashboard style to the Club Dashboard: Everything is where you would usually find it, just with a fresh, modern style update. We’re going to be making some small updates to this new dashboard style over the next few weeks. Over the next few […]
Spring Cleaning! Race Dashboard Update
Hi All! As a Spring Cleaning exercise, we’ve updated our Race Dashboard with a clean, modern visual update: Everything in the left navigation is the same as before, it just has an updated style. Likewise, everything in the Race Title Tile is still there, just moved around a bit. We will be making minor adjustments […]
WebScorer Export Option Updated
WebScorer reached out over the weekend to ask us to update our export feature we introduced several years ago. We now have a CSV export option, and have made the following changes they asked for: 1. Delete the “Name” field in the Webscorer download file and replace with “First name” and “Last name” fields are provided, […]
MailChimp Export from Participant Report
We have added MailChimp as an other export option from the Participant Report. This allows you to create custom reports and views in RunSignUp to export to your MailChimp lists. You will need to do the MailChimp setup outlined in this blog before being able to export.