Every event organizer is trying to figure out how to reduce expenses right now. Here is an overview of ways to can use RunSignup to potentially save money. We also have a sister blog for ways to Make Money with RunSignup.
Here is the quick list:
- Free Website
- Free Email
- Participants Pay Part of Timer Fees
- Free CRM
- ROI Analysis on Advertising
- Free Photos and Race Day Txt
- Deferrals for Cancelled Races
Free Website
This one is a no brainer. Many races are paying hundreds of dollars for hosting their own race website. Or paying a web company to do design and updates. We provide free hosting – no charge for SSL, no charge for hosting – just bring you own URL. Beautiful cover pages. Fully integrated data like price changes, countdown clock, email signup, results, photos, and more. You may as well use this down time to create your own website – your face to your participants. Visit https://runsignup.com/Services/Free-Website for more information.
As a side note, even if you are using another registration system, you can still use our free website capabilities and simply point to the other reg forms.
Free Email Marketing
Yes, we know our analytics and templates are not as good as Mailchimp and Constant Contact. But it is free (and our analytics will be better than anything else in the market within a year). If your organization is spending money on email marketing, this is another simple one to transition to. Just upload your contacts into our email marketing system. Copy and paste your HTML template code. Simple. And saves you money when you need to…
Participants Pay Part of Timer Fee
You can work an agreement with your timer to set an extra “Timer Fee” that gets added to the processing fee. This means that participants pay a bit more on processing fees (but we know that does not really negatively impact registrations since RunSignup has the lowest fees and there is room for you to raise those fees). This will allow the timer to be paid fairly and for your race to lower how much you have to directly pay to the timer.
Free CRM
Some larger race organizations and nonprofits pay large monthly subscription fees for a CRM, and various marketing add-ons and integrations. While RunSignup’s CRM is not as comprehensive as Salesforce, perhaps you can lower your subscription expense by using the CRM that is more tuned to races and your marketing needs anyway.
ROI Analysis on Advertising
A number of races are using Facebook and Google advertising, especially for their virtual events. You can optimize this with the use of custom tracking tokens in RaceInsights to measure which campaigns are paying off and which ones are wasting money. And hint, Facebook will take credit for everything and is not accurate. Using RaceInsights coupled with our free email and free website, you will find out the real numbers. See our blog on using our CRM and RaceInsights to track ROI.
Free Photos and Race Day Txt
Virtual races are probably better off using Facebook and Instagram for the social sharing of photos. But once real races resume, it makes a ton of sense to have a volunteer or professional photographer take photos and upload them to the Free Photo hosting we do. They are nicely integrated with results. And there is a release coming in June that will enable participants to create their own albums and upload their own photos – all for free.
Likewise, we offer free texting for virtual and timed races. This means that races can more actively engage with their participants with texting and they can upload results easily. It makes the virtual seem more real. And when you are back to having real, timed races, participants can get their results quickly.
Deferrals for Race Cancellations
Rather than refunding all of your runners from a cancelled event, we provide easy deferral tools. These include ways to allow a participant to select whether they want to be deferred to 2021, 2020 or even further out. One of the strengths of the RunSignup platform has always been the self-serve capability so that participants can make their own choices (and reduce the effort on the part of the race director). We have extended our deferral tool with new options for self-serve deferral to leave the choice to your participants.