Earlier this week the Independence Blue Cross Broad Street Run did their annual lottery pick for their famous 10 miler. Over 40,000 people had signed up for the lottery drawing during the previous two weeks. The RunSignup platform helped with a number of interesting features:
Random Selection
The RunSignup system can automatically select random people for admission. Broad Street decided that they could handle an additional 33,000 people beyond the runners admitted via other categories. There are a number of other categories for registration like charity bibs, legacy runners, corporate teams and club teams, but the lottery selections account for about 85% of the nearly 40,000 participants in the race.
Automated Charging of Credit Cards
The RunSignup system collected and securely saved the credit cards from all 40,000 applicants. We do a check when they register, and then process a transaction when they are selected. It is a fun process to watch as we do the selection in batches of about 8,000 and process them through a queue that meters the rate to about 1,200 per minute (~ 20 per second). It is fun to refresh that Lottery Report dashboard page and see the numbers selected go down and the number of registered go up so fast.
This is what the dashboard looks like right now as this is being written. Before selection there were over 40,000 in the left hand column. As we selected batched of 8,000, the second column went to 8,000+ any failed registrations and then quickly went down at the rate of about 20 per second.
Notification of Selection and Success
The RunSignup system allows for a custom notification to be sent out that the race can brand and insert their own content as well as use data tags/placeholders to be specific with things like name, wave, bib number, etc.
RunSignup also has a self serve page for the website to allow participants to double check if they are in.
Notification and Automation of Failed Credit Cards
There is always a certain % of failed credit cards between the time of registration and the time of processing. This can be due to account limits or closing of a credit card. We automatically notify selected registrants when their credit card fails and make it simple for them to enter a new credit card number to complete their registration. There were over 1,200 failed credit cards out of the 33,000 (~3.6%). It was fun to watch some of the failures get corrected within minutes on the RunSignup Lottery Report dashboard page as well. Four days later there are still about 400 incomplete registrations (~1.2%). The RunSignup system can set repeated notifications, and send a final notification that they are out of the selection process because of failed a credit card. At that time, those 400 slots can be assigned to unselected participants.
Notification of Not Selected Registrations
The RunSignup system also has the capability to send a (nice) email notifying people who were not selected. Unfortunately about 7,000 people got the sad news they were not selected. But they could always monitor the Facebook page (this increases the buzz around the event) looking for bib transfers…
Bib Transfer
Broad Street has chosen to enable the RunSignup Bib Transfer capability. This means a participant can transfer their bib to another person. The system send an invite to the new person, and once that person signs up, then the entry is automatically switched and the original participant is taken out of the race and automatically refunded. Broad Street has chosen to charge $15 for bib transfers, and the new person pays this in addition to the entry fee for the race.
Wait List Not Used
Broad Street has chosen to not use the waitlist feature because they feel the bib transfer creates more of a buzz on their Facebook page. That is where people are entered into the waitlist and are automatically chosen and notified when someone wants to drop out. It works exactly like the bib transfer with a notification being sent to the waitlist person. In addition, there is a time period the race director can set to accept the registration – say 3 days. If it is not used, then the next waitlist person in line gets an invitation. Again the original participant gets a refund when a person from the waitlist signs up. This is all automated for the race director.
Summary
While not many races are fortunate enough to have sell outs and lotteries, RunSignup offers a set of flexible tools to make any size race easier to manage and secure.