We do a quarterly update on how things are going with RunSignup (2016, Q1/17, Q2/17, Q3/17, 2017, Q1/18, Q2/18, Q3/18, 2018, Q1/19 and Q2/19). The good news is that more races, timing companies, and nonprofits continue to recommend us. And we keep putting out great technology our customers seem to like!
Q3 is always busy for us with our annual RunSignup Summer Symposium where 293 people came together to learn and grow. We announced that we would be holding two Symposiums in 2020 – with the addition of a Winter Symposium in Orlando January 13-14.
RunSignup Numbers
Our numbers were great for Q3. Put in the light of our recent Registration Market Analysis, it is clear RunSignup is benefiting from several recent trends. There is increasing turmoil in the market, and customers are seeking the stability of an employee owned company, and our significant technological lead over the rest of the market. Another positive for us has been the low churn (less than 5%) – both discontinued races were less in Q3 than previously and our losses to competitors were smaller as seen in the market analysis.
These numbers are impressive also since the migration of ChronoTrack customers is just beginning, and only a couple of dozen races have moved over in the past week or two, representing only a couple thousand registrations in the numbers below. We expect the ChronoTrack migration to drive 5-8 growth, with potential upside from the synergy with new opportunities thru their timer channel.
Gross Profit is actually the most important since it is how we pay our people and Amazon costs and for the year we are up. Gross profit was up about 27% compared from Q3 of last year due to the above increases in races and registrations and donations.
GiveSignup
Of course the big news of the quarter was the launch of GiveSignup. Our 8,000 nonprofit customers have been asking us to help them raise more from other avenues beyond run/walk/ride events. We introduced a Nonprofit Ticket platform specially designed for nonprofits – bundling donations, recurring giving, and other features typically not found in generic ticket platforms. We also introduced Donation Websites, that allow nonprofits to handle year round donations. We continue to expand functionality rapidly in this area, and our early adopters are loving our ease of use and integrated, free CRM.
Here are some examples of how customers are using the nonprofit ticket platform:
ChronoTrack-Athlinks Partnership
We announced a partnership with ChronoTrack and Athlinks that will provide joint customers with very tight integration, and help ChronoTrack registration customers migrate to RunSignup for registration, donations and fundraising. Read More →
All-in-one Fundraising with Facebook
The other big advancement over the quarter was the release and adoption of Facebook Fundraising. We had already seen a migration of customers moving from a two-system “Crowdrise + Other Reg provider” to our All-in-one platform for run/walk/ride events. The simple integration of Facebook Fundraising is having a profound impact on empowering fundraisers to raise more and lowering the cost of processing fees. Over 60 nonprofits have enabled Facebook Fundraising, and they are seeing a bump of over 10% in donations, with average donations on Facebook above $44.
This is being coupled with a complete update of our Fundraising pages, giving fundraisers even more power to raise more. For a real life example, check this fundraiser page out.
Sales Tax
The online registration market is being shaken to its core with the implementation of Marketplace Laws in a rapidly increasing number of states. This makes registration providers responsible for and liable for (in addition to races and nonprofits) collecting and paying sales tax. By the end of 2019, this will be required by 35 states and by the end of 2020 it is expected in all 45 states that collect sales tax. You can read more about the history here.
RunSignup plans to release our highly automated and compliant sales tax system in November. We expect some races to move off of us because they don’t want to pay and are willing to take the risk. We expect more races to move to our platform as a safe haven. So it will likely be positive for our business, which hopefully offsets some of our $Hundreds of Thousands of expenses in getting legal, sales tax, accounting, and development costs.
Free Website Domains and Cover Pages
This is our first full quarter of giving races and nonprofits the ability to host their domains for free (MyRace.com vs. RunSignup.com/<yRace), and beautiful cover pages. We now have over 550 domains we are hosting, and over 350 custom cover pages. Check out this cover page with the dynamic data of Fundraisers on their fun cover page.
CRM and RaceInsights Provide Powerful New Source Tracking
We have integrated the power of RaceInsights with the power of the RunSignup purpose-built CRM with source tracking. This gives races the ability to understand the source of a registration on a per person basis, as well as market to specific channels with the powerful CRM List capability.
RaceInsights has given races the ability to track the source of registrations and donations on a source basis for over two years now.
We are now storing that source with the registration information in the database in real time. So if someone came from Facebook, you will know that. This will also work with email and custom referral source tracking – so you can set up your own special codes for each marketing campaign.
The source website tracking is available now in the CRM. This is useful for list building – for example, create a list of all participants from this year who signed up via Facebook and then do a custom audience ad on Facebook next year.
RaceDay Scoring – The Future is Now
RaceDay Scoring has had 27 releases this year. Roger Bradshaw shared a recent post on how to move to the future for timers who use The Race Director. We are seeing other timers migrating to RaceDay Scoring from older products like RunScore so they can more easily train and manage multiple timer teams (as well as cool features like the dashboard and a modern graphical interface). There was a nice thread on Timers Talk this weekend about some of the success early adopters are having.
“We used it for the Rochester Marathon. On a single laptop we timed the Full, Half and Relay simultaneously. The Race included a separate start finish as well as 5 split points. We were also able to score multiple types of relay teams and wave started the wheel chair division before the main race. This Race Day Scoring is a dream to run.”Jim Marchetti and Chris May of Yellow Jacket Timing
Summary
The core of our business is based on our Guiding Principles and the fact we are an employee owned company built for the long run. This is proving to be a strategic advantage. It gives us stability that other companies driven by financials do not have. We also love the relationship we have with our customers – where employee-owners interact directly with customers – putting their hearts and souls into solving real problems and making real advancements. We thank all of our customers who help us grow by giving us great suggestions and recommending us to their friends.