This year we made the decision to convert the 36th annual Scott Coffee Rotary Run to a virtual race. As the biggest fundraiser for the local Rotary Club, it was important to make money this year. We also wanted to engage our participants with a fun event while ensuring that they come back next year when we are able to have a real race again. You can learn how we converted the Scott Coffee Rotary Run to a virtual race here: https://runsignup.blog/2020/05/07/webinar-recap-making-the-decision-to-go-virtual/
When we did the webinar about our decision to go virtual on May 7, we were at 265 registrations this year compared to 348 in 2019.
Ten days later, we are now ahead of last year’s registrations with 443 sign ups compared to 430 in 2019:
Where did this boost in registrations come from over the past 10 days? There were 4 main sources of registrations:
- Email with a strong call-to-action: 88 registrations, Free
- Facebook post boost: 28 registrations, $100
- Google: 17 registrations, Free
- Direct: (https://www.scottcoffeerun.com/): 14 registrations, $11.99 per year for GoDaddy domain
Email with a strong call-to-action : 88 Registrations, Free
We sent an email on Wednesday May 13th to past participants and custom lists (participants in the Moorestown Turkey Trot), letting them know that May 15th was the last day to sign up to guarantee a special edition shirt before virtual race week begins.
Using a strong call-to-action, whether it’s a deadline or a time-limited coupon, ensures that your email marketing works to incentivize people to sign up now. RunSignup email marketing is free, but you don’t want to bombard your lists with emails (they will unsubscribe!) – so consider what you can do to create a sense of urgency when you send an email. Here is the email that we sent on May 13.
Facebook Post Boost: 28 Registrations, $100
The same day we sent out the email, we also did a post on the Scott Coffee Rotary Run Facebook page:
We boosted the post, targeting people 18-65 who live in our town. We enabled the Automatic Placement feature that runs your ad across all of Facebook’s owned apps – including Instagram and Whatsapp. The 3 day boost resulted in 28 registrations, with about a $3.57 CPA.
Google: 17 registrations, Free
While we have not spend money on Google ads yet, it is one of the key sources of registrations and page views:
RunSignup’s free race websites are automatically search engine optimized so that your race is at the top of search engine results. When you are considering ads on a limited budget, Google may be a worthwhile investment.
Direct: 14 Registrations, Annual $11.99 Fee for GoDaddy Domain
RunSignup lets you bring your own domain for free – we take care of the SSL certificate for free – so the only cost to you is the GoDaddy or Google domain fee. The domain scottcoffeerun.com is $11.99 per year. Having your own domain, instead of a long url, makes it easy to share the website via email, social media, and word of mouth.
3 Weeks to Go
We have 3 more weeks until the start of the Scott Coffee Rotary Run Virtual race week (June 6 – June 14). Because the Facebook post boost experiment was so successful, the Rotary Club has approved a $500 marketing budget to spend over the next 3 weeks. You can learn more about how we plan to optimize this marketing spend through RunSignup free CRM and RaceInsights here: https://runsignup.blog/2020/01/08/runsignup-crm-success-story/
