Instead of losing 10 pounds and gaining it back by April, how about making a New Year’s Resolution to improve your race using some ideas you may not have tried before in RunSignup:
More Participants
- Referral Rewards. Give your participants a reason to get their friends to come to your race – CA$H! On average, Referral Rewards generates about 7% of registrations for races that turn is on – and over 10-15% for races who promote it well and give decent rewards. The best idea we’ve heard of is to give a $25 refund to participants who get at least 5 of their friends to signup for your race. Watch the video on how to set this up.
- Social Sharing. Another way to get viral marketing working for your race is to make sure you have set up the Social Sharing features for your race. This makes sure that participants can easily and effectively share their pride in registering for your race with their friends.
- Repeat Participants. There is a saying in marketing that it is cheaper to keep a customer than find a new customer. The modern language is lowering your “Churn” and improving the “Lifetime Value of a Customer”. Come up with a way to reward repeat participants. Have a special opening for them. Send them a special coupon to register. Have a formal Loyalty program. Use our EMail Marketing to target previous participants easily. Use your creativity – we have a ton of tools to help!
- Automated Emails. Set this up once and forget about it! There are two in particular – Price Increase Emails go out to previous participants automatically before any price increase. Incomplete Registration EMails also target people who come to your race website but do not complete registration.
- Better Race Website. The free RunSignup Race Website gives you a ton of options for standing out. Take advantages of breaking your long Race Info page into Menu items. Upload your own custom Header and Logo. Take some time and review our HowTo Videos on setting up your Free Race Website, or watch this video for an overview:
Fundraising
- Let donors pay the processing fee. Some charities pay the low RunSignUp 4% processing fee themselves, but you should at least give donors the ability to pay that fee themselves. This makes sure donations are maximized and donors feel even more committed.
- Make Fundraising Fun! Reward your fundraisers with cool badges. Or make it more tangible and give them free entries or refunds if they reach certain goals. Or use top fundraiser reporting tools to give them actual gifts. Make Fundraising Teams easy to join and promote.
Better Race Day
- Free Photos! Yes, 2017 is the time to embrace photos and make them as much a part of your race as Results. Either hire a professional photographer or get a couple of volunteers to take a ton of pictures to load up to RunSignup’s RaceDay Photo system. If your timer uploads results and bibs, our system will auto-tag photos so runners can find themselves and their friends. Earn money by allowing sponsors to have their logos on the photos.
- Leave Registration Open. If you are closing registration before the gun goes off for your race, you are losing participants. More and more people are registering closer and close to the race – with many happening on race day. Leaving registration open allows runners to signup on their mobile phones on the way tot he race. Or having our SignUp Kiosk with swipers can help reduce race day lines (along with our RaceDay Check-In App).
- RaceJoy GPS Tracking and Race Management. For races 10K and up, RaceJoy is the way to make your race as cool as the major marathons. Give friends and family a way to track participants in real-time on a map, send them cheers and make it easy to meet-up afterwards.
Hopefully some of these ideas will make your 2017 race the best ever!