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Facebook has released a new advertising mechanism to help your race target specific audiences rather than just people who Like your page or a demographic target. There are three types of audiences you can custom target: The customer list is interesting since you can upload a list of emails or names and phone numbers. This […]
Facebook is one of the most important promotion channels that your race can use. The basics are: Step 1 – Your race needs to have a Facebook Page that is dedicated to your race. Step 2 – You need to put great content up there. Think Pictures, fun and motivational posts, surveys, etc. See other successful […]
We have a series Customer Case Studies, in which we take your stories and share your challenges and successes as a learning tool for other RunSignUp users. This Great Pumpkin Run Case Study explores the challenges of a Multi-City Race Series, Team Promoting a Race through Groups & Teams, and using Referral Codes. View the PDF Version […]
We have recently added Rich Snippets to our Google feed of races, specifically the Microdata feed. This means when runners search for your race on Google and see the RunSignUp entry, they will get a nicely formatted search result that includes information on your events. This is big for Mobile users (47% of runners signup […]
We have a series Customer Case Studies, in which we take your stories and share your challenges and successes as a learning tool for other RunSignUp users. This 3W Races Case Study focuses on scaling Participant Management, Marketing, and Runner Communication as a growing business. View the PDF Version of the 3W Races Case Study Overview: 3W Races in Colorado […]
Runners have expressed a strong interest in electronic Badges to share with their friends. The Boston and New York Marathons have worked with Basno this year to award and distribute thousands of badges that make runners happy and raise the social visibility of their races on Facebook and other platforms. RunSignUp and Basno have now partnered to […]
We have a series Customer Case Studies, in which we take your stories and share your challenges and successes as a learning tool for other RunSignUp users. This NC Troopers Footchase 5K Case Study focuses on Growing a Small Race through community involvement, alternate participant options, and branding. View the PDF Version of the NC Troopers Footchase 5K […]
Facebook is one of the largest origins of traffic to your site for race registration, so it is important to learn how to maximize this important tool. Facebook continues to evolve rapidly. We read this article about selling fish oil on Facebook from the New York Times this weekend and thought it was worthwhile sharing […]
RunSignUp has just released our initial integration with Google Analytics! This feature is available under your race dashboard under “Promotion” -> “Google Analytics”. This new release will allow you to see the number of pageviews, and unique visitors that hit your RunSignUp Race Info page. Future updates will provide more information about pages throughout the […]
Facebook recently updated their conversion codes for their ads to support new features like tracking multiple pixels and conversion events per page. It also improves tracking of button clicks. RunSignUp has updated our conversion code integration to support these new features. Happy Marketing of your race!
The Cooper Norcross Run the Bridge race opened up for registration yesterday. This is a race that has been around for quite a few years and has about 5,000 participants in November. They have a well established Facebook page with over 3,200 Likes. This year, we added the new Facebook SignUp App. We tracked where […]
Some race sponsors want a way to distribute special gift certificates or rewards. We recently had a race in Colorado that is closely linked with a store that is giving gift certificates to the first 50 participants in each event. The purpose is to increase store traffic and drive early registrations. RunSignUp now provides a mechanism to […]
If you have a Facebook Page for your race, now you can let people Sign Up right from that page and stay in Facebook. Facebook people on your Page will see the blue “SignUp” button (right circled in Red on the right) under your cover photo so it is always on top and people are […]
If you have not experimented with Facebook Ads for your race, you are probably missing an opportunity to expand your race. As you can see on the right, Facebook is offering a variety of options for advertising, which can be confusing. Facebook is also making moves that limit the reach of normal posts to as low […]
Here is a cool article about a 300 person race in North Carolina. There are some great ideas in here for any race director. Kelly Stewart, the race director, will be one of our speakers at our RunSignUp Users Conference (don’t forget to sign up!). “Stewart also made registering for the event easier by partnering […]
Facebook has a new type of advertising mechanism – Offers. You can create an offer for your Facebook Race Page easily by going to https://www.facebook.com/offers/. The way it works is that you pay advertising $ to Facebook and they will put the offer into the feed of your target (fans of your race page and typically […]
We are already seeing race directors come up with different loyalty reward spins on the Space Coast Marathon example of giving a first shot to previous entries for a race. Here is an example of an email we got today: “We can email our past participants announcing registration open date. We can also let them […]
Custom URL’s allow you to specify your own web address without having to have your own website – like http://www.runsignup.com/MyRace. We now give you a way to go to specific pages beyond your custom URL. This gives you a nice short address to direct people right to registration or results. For example: https://runsignup.com/rotary8k/results
We have a number of races that are seeing a real spike on New Year’s Eve because of the promotion they did – and not just these sample “Resolution Runs”. This is a great idea that can be done in a lot of ways. Here are some ideas: Create a One Day Coupon Code Give […]
With the release of RunSignUp Teams 2.0, we have added a number of powerful options for pricing and packaging to help your race: Encourage more participants to sign up together at one time. Allow people to sign up separately and still be seen as a group or team. Encourage the size of teams and groups […]
Several races have asked us recently for help in marketing their races. We offer a number of ways for races to help promote themselves (like giving you free email marketing, providing natural search, Facebook and Twitter integration, the best Mobile reach, integration with Google and Facebook advertising, Coupon integration with sites like Groupon and Living Social, […]
RunSignUp provides races with 4 major ways for races to get the most traffic to their website. 1. Your website! Yes, nearly half of the traffic for registration on RunSignUp is coming thru widgets that are actually on other websites. Having your own website is simply the best way to build YOUR brand and get […]
An increasing number of races are using ads to bring more runners to their events. RunSignUp now offers you a simple way to track your conversions! We allow you to track conversions from Google Adwords, Facebook Ads, Adroll and Google Remarketing. If you are new to web advertising, you might want to take a look at […]
As any race director knows, the key to increasing your participation is by encouraging people to refer their friends. The other key is having other organizations like the local running store, or running club or Cross Fit Gym list you on their website or email blasts. Now you can make a game of it and track who […]
We are really excited about this new capability that helps bring races and running clubs together! A simple way for a race director to give discounts to running club members! This can be used in lots of ways: Races attract more running club members Races encourage runners to join a running club Running Clubs attract […]
We have a number of large races and multi-city races that have become big users of Coupons to help drive their participants. They create custom coupons around special marketing events (like July 4th!), or use “Daily Deal” sites like Groupon and Living Social, or target running store customers with a special coupon, etc. Once you […]
We have upgraded the Coupon Code capabilities! As usual, it is all now mobile friendly with the responsive design. The design is a bit simpler for people to understand and set up coupons. The big new feature is better reporting. You can now see a summary of how many coupons of each type have been […]
This has been replaced by our new Email Marketing system – https://runsignup.blog/2015/01/07/new-runsignup-email-system/ One of the many free features RunSignUp offers is free email marketing – up to 6 emails for each race. (We never send runners emails – that is all up to you, the race director) We enable this in combination with our partner, iContact. […]
Here is the recording from a fabulous webinar we put on with the good folks at Virtual Race Bags.
We covered a number of promotional ideas for races in this video: Promotion Ideas for the New Year Age-Based Pricing Group-based Pricing Coupons Discounts Gift Certificates Virtual Race Bags Facebook & Social Media Email •50,000 Registrations in 7 Minutes •100,000 Results per Minute
Promotional Ideas for 2013! There are lots of ways to promote your race. In this newsletter we will highlight some of the ones that might help increase participation in your races: Age-Based Pricing – Target younger runners or older runners to your race! If movie theatres do it, why not you? Group-based Pricing – How […]
Our Monthly Webinar is a chance to see some of the latest advances from RunSignUp and how your race can take advantage of them. We also open the floor to any questions. Topics from the December Webinar include: Results Gift Certificates Sponsor Images Registration on Your Website Video Help New Race Director User Interface
One of the races that uses RunSignUp, the Passaic Valley 5K, is being highlighted on Running HD on the YES Network (the network that carries the Yankees and other sports teams). They gave a nice shout-out to RunSignUp! Here is the video: Highlights of the December 2012 episode can be seen at: http://youtu.be/me7BvjCCZDo YES Airtimes: […]
We now enable gift certificates on every race! This works very simply. Anyone can purchase a gift certificate for any amount for a race. We default to the current fee for that event. The recipient’s name and email address are entered, and they are then notified of their gift. They can then use the special […]
We have seen several races beginning to use Groupon or other similar coupon sites to attract runners. Runners will buy a Groupon and be issued a unique coupon code. RunSignUp now has a simple way to import those coupon codes quickly and easily. The video below shows you how to import the codes. Once they […]
I just got an email – an offer from a race to let me vote on the color of T-Shirt I want. This is a great idea!
