At RunSignup we know that organizing trail and ultra races takes as much effort as running them. And our team features plenty of running nerds — including trail & ultra runners who understand the challenges (and rewards) firsthand. Because of that, we understand how more reliable, dynamic technology for your events can improve everything from registration to participant management to event day efficiency and safety.
When you think about a trail run, you probably think more about trees and rocks than circuit boards and lines of code. But used correctly the latter can actually make the former more enjoyable. Learn more about how technology can help you meet your goals throughout the race lifecycle. If all your technology does is sign people up, you deserve more.
Read all or skip to your goal for 2025…
Pre-Race Goals
RaceDay Goals
Post-Race Goal
Why Technology Matters for Your Ultra and Trail Races: Pre-Race
Race directing doesn’t start on race day. See how technology can help you meet your goals of reaching more runners, saving more of your time, streamlining customer service and communications, and growing revenue.
Goal: Reach More People
Unless you sell out every year (congratulations!), you’re probably looking for a way to increase your reach and introduce more runners to your event. We often hear concern that people won’t find ultra and trail races if the word “ultra” isn’t in the company name, but the data simply doesn’t support that. Runners find your events across the web (and from our own search).
Maybe the most important factor? We don’t own any races and we don’t market any races. This means we’ll never use your participant data to sell another race.
How RunSignup Automates Marketing to Help You Reach More People
- SEO Optimization: Did you know that 24% of all race website views come from Organic Search? RunSignup optimizes your site for SEO by automatically displaying key race information where Google can understand it and ensuring the fast, mobile-friendly navigation that Google prefers. Additionally, you can renew your race each year, meaning you never run the risk of having your 2022 race show up when someone is looking for your 2025 edition.
- Affiliates and Calendars: RunSignup’s Open API is used by big and small race calendars from around the country. Prominent calendars like RunningInTheUSA and EVVNT automatically add your event, along with dozens of smaller, more local calendars and Ultra Running Magazine. This makes a big difference: in 2024, 22% of all race website traffic was from referral sources like calendars.
SEO Optimization
Affiliate Race Calendar
Recommended Action To Reach Even More People
- Setup an Email Capture: Add a quick email capture form to your race website to collect emails of website visitors who want to keep in touch with your event. This creates an email list of potential runners you can reach out to each year as the race approaches.
Goal: Save Time and Money
How RunSignup Saves You Time and Money
- Free Email: RunSignup offers free and unlimited email so you’re never forced to weigh the value of a marketing email against the cost of the send. Why? We know email works — 12% of 2024 registration dollars were from RunSignup email.
- Free Race Website: Stop paying for external website hosting and a webmaster to make occasional updates. RunSignup’s free websites for races and organizations means you can build a full, content-rich website for free (no coding required). To maintain your branding, simple BYO your own domain!
Free Race Website
Free Email
Recommended Action to Save Even More Time and Money with RunSignup
- Dive into free tools for Organizations. Every event comes with a dedicated race website and the capability to send emails about your race. But if you own multiple races, you may be interested in a (free) Organization Website for your whole race company, along with Organization Email to send regular event newsletters and updates separate from your specific races.
Goal: Streamline Customer Service & Communications
How RunSignup Streamlines Customer Service & Communications
- Automated and Pre-Built Emails: Setup dynamic participant communications in advance, including price increase emails and registration follow-up emails that allow you to keep in touch as your race approaches. Need help picking the right replacement tags and details for each email? Pre-built emails give you a head start with important reminders and optimal replacement tags included.
- Self-Serve Participant Management: We all hate refund requests, but with ultra and trail races, they can be inevitable. Enable options for self-serve participant management to allow participants to manage their own registration without so much as emailing you. Allow for bib transfers, distance transfers, deferrals, giveaway size updates, and more — you set the parameters for each and your work is done. Worried about losing money because you are too flexible? Conditional refunds and/or fees for participant management changes protect and even boost your bottom line.
Automated and Pre-Built Emails
Self-Serve Participant Management
Recommended Actions to Further Streamline Customer Service and Communications
- Add an FAQ: Add a custom page to your race website to pre-answer all the questions you get by email, and simply link to the relevant response anytime someone sends the question by email. Bonus: RunSignup has scores of how-to videos for actions like updating your giveaway size or joining a team. Simply link to or copy our content to make building an FAQ a breeze!
- Add a Contact Us Form: Ok, we know: you want to reduce the number of participant emails, not increase them! But it’s better to have an easy way for participants to reach you when needed than to cause frustration. Best part? If different members of your team handle different tasks, you can customize the Contact Us forms on each page with a different reply-to email, so your volunteer coordinator can get all volunteer-related questions, your timer can get timing questions, etc.
Race FAQ
Custom Contact Us Forms
Goal: Grow Revenue
How RunSignup Grows Your Revenue
- Pricing Strategies: We know that pricing drives registrations: participants respond to deadlines. In 2024, 26% of all registrations took place within 3 days of a price increase. With RunSignup, it’s easy to customize your pricing to meet your needs. One of our favorite, most effective pricing options is Referral Rewards, which encourages participants to share your event with the ultimate goal of receiving a refund or swag. However, the options are endless. The best part? All pricing setups can be fully controlled and updated by you. We recommend choosing just one or two of the strategies below at a time, and highlighting the price incentives in all your communications and marketing.
- Referral Rewards to reward participants who actively promote your event
- Time-based price increases to encourage early registrations
- Event-size price increases to prompt urgent action
- Age-based pricing to ensure the whole family can sign up
- Team Pricing to incentivize sharing
- Membership discounts to engage the local running community
- Participant Insurance: Enabling participant insurance allows registrants to opt to purchase insurance for their race. For a 8.1% of their race fee, runners have the ability to file for a refund (directly with the insurance company, not with you) if they miss the race for a covered reason like injury. This can eliminate chargebacks and keep participants happier while reducing customer service, but it’s also a small boost to revenue. Twenty percent of all insurance premiums are paid to the race, and with the risks of ultras and trail races, runners are all the more likely to buy a little peace of mind.
Pricing Incentives
Participant Insurance
Recommended Actions to Grows Your Revenue Even More
- Store Items: Sell fun, branded merch during (or even outside) of race registration with add-on and store items. It’s easy to add available options, collect sizes, and event verify shipping information (where applicable).
- Donations: Solicit donations during and outside of registration to boost revenue to your cause. Customizable donation levels make donating more personal and relatable. To maximize donations, enable a checkbox donation at checkout to encourage everyone to make a small donation.
Merch Store
Donations
Why Technology Matters for Your Ultra and Trail Races: RaceDay
While races take months of work to execute, it’s all geared towards one thing: a safe, fun race day. Technology can help you track participants on remote courses and find ways to create engagement between runners and their supporters.
Goal: Eliminate Lines
How to Eliminate Lines (and Hassle) with RunSignup
- RaceDay Registration: Stop wasting time trying to decipher scribbling on paper and get people through registration faster. As long as your start location has cell service, it’s simple to leave online registration open and post QR codes directing procrastinators to register on their phones. Fast registration mode lets registrants skip unnecessary questions on their phone to speed them through registration. For anyone who needs a little extra help (or a larger keyboard), On-Site Registration lets you set up a quick registration kiosk to be manned by a single volunteer. This allows you to reduce or eliminate the cash-on-hand needed for race morning, and syncs late-comers directly to your registration data for your timer, no data entry needed.
- RaceDay CheckIn App: Check people in in seconds with a QR scan or name search. For locations with spotty connectivity, the app continues to work offline when service is lost, syncing the data from all devices once a connection is restored. And with the ability for volunteers to check people in on their own, familiar devices, it takes just minutes to train your volunteers. Once they’re trained, the RaceDay CheckIn app can also be used to check-in your volunteers.
RaceDay Registration
RaceDay CheckIn App
Recommended Actions for You to (Further) Eliminate Lines
- Dynamic Bib Assignment: For an even speedier process, implement dynamic bib assignment and stop searching through piles of incorrectly alphabetized bibs. A bonus of dynamic bib assignment? No need to waste chips on runners who don’t show up on race morning.
Goal: Create a Safe Environment
How RunSignup Cultivates Safety
- RaceJoy Runner Tracking: RaceJoy provides participants with real-time tracking based on RFID chip tracking (“Bib Tracking”) or GPS-based phone tracking. With off-course alerts, communication capabilities, and a monitoring dashboard for race directors, RaceJoy phone tracking helps ensure all runners stay on-course. While phone tracking is best when a course has ~70% cell coverage, RaceJoy’s natively stored course maps can be a crucial safety backup for navigation. For races with no cell coverage, the RaceJoy integration with chip timing allows race organizers and spectators to still monitor the progress of runners on course via traditional timing points.
- Mobile Timing App: With long distances to cover and spread out fields, knowing who is still on course (and where) is critical for an ultra race. RunSignup’s Mobile Timing app can be used for more than just backup timing: aid stations and course marshal’s on course can easily use the app to record every runner as they come through. The Mobile Timing app works offline and syncs when a connection becomes available, meaning even the most remote aid station can keep a record of who they have seen come through.
RaceJoy Runner Tracking
Mobile Timing App
Recommended Actions for You to Cultivate Safety
- RaceDay CheckIn for Medical Tents: The RaceDay CheckIn app can also be used to simplify medical tent operations. Medical staff can quickly check-in participants to instantly access a runner’s emergency contacts, medical alerts, or other essential details. Then, medical staff can add status changes and check-participants out of the medical tent once cleared. This makes it easy to track treatment for all runners, no matter how minor.
Goal: Prompt More Engagement
How RunSignup Prompts More Engagement
- RaceJoy Runner Tracking for Spectators: Nothing breaks up the long, lonely hours on an ultra course quite like a personal message from a distant friend. RaceJoy does more than just provide a safety backup: it offers a connection between runners and spectators. With “send-a-cheer” capabilities, runners can get encouragement from support crew both on-site and many miles away. And even if spectators aren’t doing their part, race directors can use RaceJoy to make the run more fun. With a custom audio experience, a creative race director can add geo-based and distance-based cheers and encouragement of their own.
- Mobile Timing App with Photo Integration: In addition to serving as a backup timing option, RunSignup’s Mobile Timing app also has an integration with RaceDay Photos. This means you can use the app to post photos of runners on course in real-time, with auto-bib tagging to allow friends and family at home to instantly see the photos of their runner.
RaceJoy Runner Tracking
Mobile Timing App with Photo Integration
Recommended Action for You to Prompt Engagement
- Enable photo uploads: Make photos interactive by enabling the ability for participants to upload their own race day memories. RunSignup will verify that the person uploading was a participant, ensure that no inappropriate photos are uploaded, and auto-tag any runners by bib number. Want to get more people involved? Offer a perk or prize to the top photo uploader!
Why Technology Matters for Your Ultra and Trail Races: Post-Race
Goal: Build Loyalty
How RunSignup Builds Loyalty
- Keep in touch: Not to sound repetitive, but RunSignup’s integrated email marketing makes it easy to send a post-race email with all the key details of the day, from results to photos. For race companies with more than one event, Organization Email makes it easy for you to cross-promote additional races to your runners and take them from fans of a race you do to fans of your race company.
Recommended Actions for You to Build Loyalty
- Loyalty Programs: Take loyalty a step further with discounts or early registration for your biggest fans. There are many ways to accomplish that, but using a loyalty list with reserved entry ensures that right people get the perks (no coupon sharing!).
- Memberships Options: For race companies with multiple events, you can use Memberships to encourage runners to join more of your races throughout the year. Simply set up a Membership program that runners can join (for free or for a fee), and then offer discounted registrations for each of your races to those who opt to join. With memberships tied to registration, the system automatically applies the discount for members and suggests non-members consider joining.
The truth is, this blog could go on…forever, with never-ending ways to get more out of technology. But the bottom line is this: choose your registration provider for what they can do for you, not the name they chose.
Want to learn more? It’s free an easy to get started today, or schedule a call to talk to a RunSignup rep.