We are excited to introduce the first version of Image Gallery for Email V2. The Image Gallery is a powerful way to use, manage, and organize images across all of your races and ticket events. The first place we’ve added Image Gallery is Email V2. Image Gallery is one of the really powerful features we are introducing with V2 of Email and Websites (coming late this year!). In the long term, Image Gallery will be available anywhere you use images on RunSignup and TicketSignup – from logos and headers to Websites and Email.
Whether you have one race a year or dozens of races and ticket events, Image Gallery is a powerful tool to manage images across events, Email, and Websites. We have a lot more functionality coming. Image Gallery is WordPress/Squarespace and Mailchimp/Constant Contact combined – but FREE and purpose-built for events.
What Is the Image Gallery in Email V2?
When you add an image to your Emails, there are now 3 tabs for you to choose from: Upload, My Image Gallery, and System Images.
Upload
The first option when adding an image is to Upload an image from your computer, phone, or tablet. In addition to editing the image with our cropping and rotate tools, there are a number of additional options available:
- Image Name: This will default to the name that the image already has. In many cases, this can be something like “Untitled”. You can add an Image Name that will display in My Image Gallery. The Image Name is an internal field that only event directors will see. How does this help? We will add Search capabilities to Image Gallery in the future so that you’ll be able to search based on Image Name.
- Alt Text: Alt text (alternative text) describes the appearance or function of an image on a page. Alt text is read aloud by screen readers used by visually impaired users. When we add Image Gallery to Websites V2, it displays in place of an image if it fails to load and is indexed by search engine bots to better understand the content of your page (helping with SEO).
- Album: By default, all uploaded images are saved to the My Images folder for your event. You can also add additional folders to organize images – like Sponsors, Event Photos, Marketing, etc. Albums help you organize images.
- Image Alignment and URL Type: These are existing image features that allow you to align the image and hyperlink to a RunSignup page or a Custom URL.
Once you upload an Image, you can click Edit to update the above fields. At this time, we do not allow album management. In addition, if you want to replace the image you first need to delete the existing image and add a new one. We will follow up in the next ~week with a release to allow you to replace an image with the full Image Gallery.
My Image Gallery
My Image Gallery includes images that you have already uploaded to Email V2. You can choose from any of your existing albums. The best part? It automatically works across your RunSignup and TicketSignup events that use the same payment account. In the example below, 4 of the races and ticket events associated with my payment account have uploaded Images to Email V2. I can choose images from any of the albums. This enables easy and consistent branding across events, and less manual work to re-upload the same images.
System Images
Don’t have images that you like for your Email? Search our System Images to find one you like! We’ve added several albums of images across a few common RunSignup event categories. Since images have so much impact for marketing events, we will continue to add more system images. Recently, we purchased dozens of photos from an event photographer that will be coming soon!
What’s Coming Next?
Image Gallery is a big release. As mentioned, we have a couple updates coming soon, including the option to easily replace images with the Image Gallery. Over the next several months, we have several more big releases planned:
- Search Capabilities: We will add more image search capabilities, including by image name and upload date.
- Album and Image Management: This is a big project. However, we ultimately plan to add a dashboard page that allows events to manage albums and images within it.
- Image Gallery for Logos and Banners: Today, we treat banners and logos separately. We will investigate how to extend Image Gallery capabilities to logos and banners.
- Image Gallery for Websites V2: Our development team is working on a big websites upgrade, and we hope to introduce Websites V2 to races by the end of 2023 (set up an organization website or a ticket event to get a preview now!). Image Gallery will be part of Websites V2.
Whether you have one race a year or dozens of races and ticket events, Image Gallery is a powerful tool to manage images across events, Email, and Websites.