As you go to open up your virtual race – whether it is a brand new idea, or a virtual version of your traditional race or fundraiser – you will need to learn some new things. We give you a ton of increasing engaging technology to put on your virtual fundraiser like free websites, cover pages, free email, virtual results, virtual txt bots, and RaceJoy. But the #1 thing you should do is embrace the social experience and use our Referral Rewards.
Here is the data:
April 2019 – 7% of registrations from Referral Rewards
April 2020 – 18% of registrations from Referral Rewards
Yes, virtual races that turn on referral rewards get 18% of their registrations from referrals of people who have already signed up. Here is the detailed data:

If you are not familiar with marketing terms, ROI is Return on Investment. That means that these races earned a 2,022% return on investment (that is like buying Amazon stock in 2001!). They spent $31,825.71 to get $paid 643,573.66 from new registrations.
The CPA is Cost per Acquisition. The above data says that you spend $2.04 to get another participant.
How hard is it to use Referral Rewards?
Easy! Just go to the last step of the Wizard and turn it on:

If you are not familiar with referral rewards – you set up a refund for anyone who gets at least X friends to register. Our standard suggestion is 5 referrals will earn the participant at least $20. The more money (even a full refund) will get people working harder for you to promote your event – hundreds of ambassadors!
We take care of all the refunds and tracking for you. For free, as usual.
We handle everything automatically for you, with lots more options to have multiple levels of refunds, and even earning SWAG. Just search for “referral” or “reward” on your dashboard, or go to https://RunSignup.com/Marketing. The webinars on Referral Rewards and SWAG Rewards go in depth.
Market Referral Rewards
To make this really work, you need to market it! You need to create a section on your cover page that explains the program. You need to set up emails to remind people to use it (remember to use the custom tag in our email system that sends everyone their own custom referral link). We see some races over 30%.
Virtual runners are social. Even though they may be under stay at home orders, they crave doing things with others, and virtual races provide that outlet to do things together separately.