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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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
We like to hear from people in the industry to find out more about them and how they use RunSignup’s products. Recently, RunSignup’s Steve Bingham-Hawk chatted with Michelle Craske with Sommer Sports to get some inside scoop. For those of you not familiar with Sommer Sports, it is an established race management company located in Clermont, Florida. It’s founder, Fred Sommer, is highly regarded as one of the long-time substantial influencers of the triathlon industry and helped the industry transform throughout the years. He has also continued to stay abreast of changes in the industry to continue to provide a sought-after race experience. Fred has also been a valued customer of RunSignup and uses its many capabilities to support the events they manage and the participants and volunteers who take part in in them.
We are planning to do an upgrade to Amazon AWS Aurora MySQL 2 sometime in the next week and a half. We expect less than 5 minutes of potential system impact. Another blog will be posted the day before we do the upgrades. Planned Impact There should be minimal impact with the whole upgrade process […]
We’re shaking things up this winter and heading out on the road to meet more of our customers! After evaluating our internal events goals, we have decided to forego our Winter Symposium in lieu of a series of smaller events in more corners of the country. This Roadshow will allow us to connect with customers […]
We have been doing the race registration market analysis every 6 months for many years. We include a ton of analytical data, and also include our analysis of happenings and directions in the market (of course that analysis is done from our perspective and is sometimes biting to competitors but tries to be honest). Here […]
With RunSignup, your event gets a free website that’s easy to design and customize. We do a lot to optimize the websites of more than 27,000 events each year, including making sure that your events are easily found online. One of the many benefits of having your events on RunSignup is that they are automatically […]
We have a great many events that use RunSignup for important causes throughout the nation. When we saw a virtual free event, Finish Eliza’s Run, to respond in a unified indignation to the death of a fellow runner, Eliza “Liza” Fletcher, we thought we share to help build awareness.
Feature Updates Updated Loading Progress Component. We improved the loading indicator, adding progress for loading Fundraiser data separate from the Participant/Volunteer data. Added the ability to quickly edit a Preset from the Configuration setup by tapping the arrow next to the Preset Name. This should make it easier to update a currently selected Preset by […]
Race Directors and Timers are invited to watch this Webinar where we provide an update on the RaceDay CheckIn app’s latest improvements and newest features, including pre-set and configuration changes. RunSignup’s Matt Avery talks through the advantages of using the app and gives practical guidance on how to set up the CheckIn app so that volunteers can efficiently use the app for processing participants.
We lowered the Reserve Holdbacks to 0% effective today. This is a very happy day and another sign of recovery in our endurance community. As you may recall we always had a normal 0% holdback (meaning we pay out when people signup), but instituted a 20% holdback at the beginning of the Pandemic. We have […]
Below is a recorded webinar on The Advantage of Fundraising. This session offers some valuable information on how fundraising can help increase revenue and registrations and how to take advantage of these tools within your RunSignup dashboard.
RunSignup Spotlight and Insights RunSignup’s Bob Bickel was recently interviewed by William Blair, a premier global boutique investment firm, to get an update on RunSignup and the industry. You can read the full report to get a pulse on the company and the industry, how RunSignup has prospered in a competitive and challenging environment, and […]
Printing Updates Added Configuration setting to automatically print after Review. This will automatically send the print job after selecting “Save and Continue” on the CheckIn confirmation page. Added Print Button to Participant Info Screen. Now you can print labels from the Participant Info screen as well as from the CheckIn Confirmation screen. This allows you […]
Part of Bob’s continued ramblings. One of the things that a lot of companies do is “chase the deal”. They close on sales tactics and quite often “special” pricing. I’ve been at lots of companies like this, and one of my goals at RunSignup was to avoid this spiral. Create a good product for a good […]
Race week is an exciting time for participants. It’s important for race directors to capture that momentum and get early registrations for the following year. There are a few ways that RunSignup can help depending on the approach you would like to take. Here are a couple options and recommended best practices that you can […]
We release an annual RaceTrends Report each winter to provide a thorough assessment of the state of the endurance and fundraising events industry. This year, as the industry adapts to a post-pandemic world, we pulled a reduced round of midyear data to help event organizers better understand the current state of the industry. The Data The data […]
We are excited to announce our newest team member, Erin Witzel. Erin is joining RunSignup as a developer who will first be spearheading the completion and maintenance of our new WordPress website (first step: this TicketSignup blog!). She was initially hired for the website project as a contractor, and has been inspired to stay. Over […]
This week we welcomed race directors and timers from across the country to Philadelphia for our 2022 Summer Symposium. After several years without an event, it was a joy to see so many familiar customers, meet new people in the industry, and learn about the amazing events our community is organizing. If you missed the […]
This is a guest blog written by Gerry Perez of RUNGP, an SMS (TXT) provider for endurance events. He talks about the benefits of SMS marketing, and includes some of the RunSignup customers who successfully use his service. Note: RunSignup provides txt messaging for results and emergency notifications for free, but does not allow marketing […]
This week is our first live RunSignup Symposium since the pandemic (the last one was January, 2020 in Orlando). We started these in 2014 when we were much smaller (way before most companies would think about having a conference). I thought it might be useful to write a Founder’s Corner blog about why we put […]
IMPORTANT UPGRADE NOTICE: After upgrading to this version, any presets and configurations for saved Races will need to be created again. General Updates Presets and Configurations can now be edited. Before this update you could not edit existing Presets or Configurations, you would have to create new versions of them. Now you are able to […]
Below is a Timer Tip Tuesday covering how to use RaceDay Scoring for cross country events. RunSignup’s Crisp McDonald and Roger Bradshaw walk through the different preset configurations available in RaceDay Scoring specifically for cross country events and reporting options. Also covered are the various result integrations available to timers such as TFRRS, Athletic.net, and RunSignup team results publishing.
In trying to answer the question of when participants will come back to races, we turned to Google Trends, which is a cool tool that shows the relative volume of Google Searches over time. It goes back to 2004, and looking past the seasonality, the trend line is pretty obvious: The peak year was 2013 […]
With some lingering instability in the endurance event market, the key question we are hearing from race directors is how can you help me grow my event? The good news? RunSignup offers you a multitude of tools designed to help you rebuild and grow your events. Before we dive into the tools available to you, […]
We get a lot of questions about how RunSignup can promote your event, and people are always surprised when we say we don’t promote your event − we give you the tools to promote your event. This doesn’t mean we don’t understand the importance of marketing to your event; on the contrary, event marketing is […]
Q2 2022 saw several trends: Races are down about 20% from their 2019 numbers, and 25% of races over 500 participants in 2019 are not back and likely not returning RunSignup has seen continued market share growth Registration vendors are getting very aggressive given the shrinkage in the market RunSignup / GiveSignup Peer to Peer […]
Race events using the RaceDay CheckIn app are now able to print personalized participant information to create more efficient processing at packet pickup and on race day. Labels placed on the participant bibs can contain a number of custom fields, such as name, age, event the participant is doing, team name, corral, bib number, and t-shirt size. The RaceDay CheckIn app is compatible with iOS and Android devices and transmits data to the label printer using local WiFi services. RunSignup’s RaceDay CheckIn app is a free product designed for race organizers to deliver an efficient race day check-in experience and overcome typical race operations challenges.
Let’s Do This (LDT) is not a partner of RunSignup. We have heard from a number of races who use RunSignup that LDT has approached them claiming to be a partner with us. If this is the case it is a misrepresentation. There are no partner or other agreements between our companies. In fact, our […]
We are excited to announce our newest team member, Katie Atherton. Katie is joining us as an Account Manager and will be responsible for reviewing events and working with them to understand the various features and best practices for setting up and managing events on the platform. To welcome Katie to our team and to […]
Our 2022 Summer Symposium is returning to Philadelphia in just six weeks, after a two year hiatus and just 40 spots remain available. 2022 Summer Symposium Agenda The 2022 Agenda is hyper-focused on rebuilding event and timing organizations by understanding and solving of the challenges of reaching and retaining participants in a volatile endurance market. […]
Part of Bob’s continued ramblings. Today’s topic on Founders Corner is about the rise and fall of the fast checkout companies like Fast and Bolt. I’ve been following them for quite some time since we are in the payments business and we have focused on having a fast signup and checkout experience for our customers. I wrote about […]
There are new entrants in the registration business that are coming who have the expertise of Facebook and Google employees who will talk about A/B testing and optimizing checkout and minimizing drop-outs during registration. They will likely promote it as new and much better than existing registration systems because they care about the user experience. […]
The Partner Program is for companies that manage multiple events per year, handling more than 5,000 registrations/attendees or more than $200,000 in registrations/ticket sales per year. If you would like to learn more about TicketSignup’s partner program, email info@runsignup.com. Partners can now view and access their ticket events from the Partner Dashboard. There is also […]
We are happy to announce an update to RaceDay CheckIn that adds support for wireless (via WiFi network) label printing on the CheckIn Confirmation screen, and In-App Support. We have added support for printing out Participant Details when confirming a CheckIn. This is really useful if you want to include details about the participant that […]
RaceDay Check-Ins Indicate Participant Trend We thought we’d share some insights with race organizers on the activity level we are seeing at races across the country by looking at the usage stats of the RaceDay CheckIn app. This activity gives us two key trend points: The number of events and the number of participant check-ins. […]
This year, we are welcoming five interns who will be joining us for what is shaping up to be a busy season. The company’s robust internship program includes positions in multiple departments with the opportunity to provide significant contributions to our mission, as well as relevant experience for students. Over the years, many of our […]
Designers working on large software products often have a difficult and counterintuitive lesson to learn. They need to learn to let go of some control in order to design at scale. Left to their own devices, designers will try to control every pixel of a product, and have rationale for every piece of UI and […]
Feature Updates Added the ability to customize Aggregate Team Detail Report Filters to only show those that scored. This is found in Team Detail Report Sections when building Reports under the “Filters & Sorts” section. This will hide all participants who weren’t used towards counting the group’s aggregate placement. Participants who were not originally scored, […]
McGuire’s St. Patrick’s Day Prediction 5K Run is the largest 5K Prediction Run in America. Held on the weekend of St. Patrick’s Day, the event is more than just a race – it’s a full-fledged party with live entertainment, Irish Fare, Irish Wakes, and beer. This year, they let us follow along on their email […]
We laid out our plans for our next generation website capability in this blog post in December, 2021. As with most things at RunSignup, we do incremental releases and continually get market feedback and improve. We released another milestone this week – Organization Websites. This takes the website capability that is built into our TicketSignup […]
An Example of Best Practices Applied Most running, walking, and cycling events serve a fundraising function for important services to support our communities like the Autism Society of Central Virginia’s 5K Challenge. ASCV has multiple ways its raises funds to support its growing programs, and reports that their 5K challenge is its largest annual fundraiser. […]
The recorded webinar below offers and overview and product demo of the latest advancements in the RaceDay CheckIn app.
In a world where everything is getting more expensive, is it time race directors bite the bullet and increased prices? Race Directors Hub just hosted an episode of the #HeadStart podcast where guests covered this very topic.
Part of my Founder’s Corner blog series on what, how and why we do things at RunSignup. This will be a combo blog. I am really into this term “Product Led” (I think the team at RunSignup might be tired of hearing it from me), so I want to talk about that some. And if […]
It seems Race Roster is having a big calling campaign into races who use RunSignup. We’ve been getting emails and feedback similar to this the past several weeks: “Just got a call from Race Roster trying to pull me over from RSU – not happening – they don’t give up – lol.” RunSignup Customer There […]
