Event Information

RunSignup’s Email V2 is a powerful, free tool that helps you communicate with participants, promote your event, and streamline operations—all within your race dashboard. In this session, our onboarding team will walk you through the essentials of using Email V2, from building your contact lists to creating automated emails that keep participants engaged.

Key topics include:

• How to set up and send marketing and event emails
• Using prebuilt templates and dynamic replacement tags
• Automating pre- and post-event emails
• Managing contact lists and tracking email performance
• And more!

Bring your questions! We’ll answer written questions throughout the webinar, as well as key questions verbally at the conclusion of the session.

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Webinar Summary

Overview

This RunSignup 101 webinar introduces Email V2, the enhanced version of RunSignup’s built-in email marketing system. Designed to be more user-friendly and feature-rich than the original, Email V2 is available to all race directors, event organizers, and ticket event hosts on the platform at no additional cost.

The session includes a live platform demo covering how to create, customize, and send an email from start to finish, followed by a tour of additional features like custom lists, templates, automated emails, and reporting.

What You’ll Learn

• What Email V2 is and how it differs from the original email marketing system
• Who should be using Email V2 (spoiler: everyone)
• How to navigate to Email V2 from your race dashboard
• How to select recipients and build your email
• The difference between marketing and transactional emails
• How to schedule emails in advance
• How to use automated emails to grow registrations
• What additional features are available inside Email V2
• How to view email performance data and reporting

What Is Email V2?

Email V2 is an upgraded version of RunSignup’s standard email marketing system, built with additional features and a more intuitive interface. The original email system remains available for longtime users who have existing contact lists and templates they want to preserve — but for anyone new to the platform, Email V2 is the recommended starting point.

It includes most of the features you’d find in a paid third-party email marketing tool and is designed specifically to help event organizers grow their participant lists, drive registrations, and communicate effectively — all without leaving RunSignup.

Who Should Use Email V2?

Every single person on the RunSignup platform. Whether you have a road race, a ticket event, or any other type of event, Email V2 is built for you. It is:

• 100% free — no subscription or add-on cost
• Mobile-friendly — emails are optimized for how most people read them today
• Fully featured — comparable to paid platforms like Mailchimp or Constant Contact
• Easy to replace your current third-party email provider

Creating and Sending an Email: Step by Step

Step 1: Navigate to Email V2

From your race dashboard, find Email Marketing V2 in the left-hand menu. Use the menu search bar if you have trouble locating it — just type what you’re looking for and it will point you right there.

Step 2: Choose Your Recipients

Click Send Email and select who you want to include or exclude:

• Include current participants, past participants (up to 3 years back), or specific contacts
• Exclude groups as needed to narrow your audience
• Add a single contact if you only need to reach one or two people
• The system will show you an estimated recipient count before you send — use this to double-check your selection

Step 3: Set Your From and Subject Line

• The from address defaults to the race director on file and can be updated in your settings
• Use the built-in subject line best practices guide on the right side of the screen
• Consider using an AI tool to help craft attention-grabbing subject lines if copywriting isn’t your strong suit

Step 4: Build Your Email Content

Click Create Email and choose from four starting options:

• Start from scratch — a blank canvas for full creative control
• Basic template — a pre-built drag-and-drop layout from RunSignup
• HTML — paste in code from a designer or a previous platform
• Pre-built emails — ready-to-use emails organized by category; great for those new to email marketing

Inside the editor, you can add and edit sections including headers, text blocks, buttons with links, images, social media, sponsors, QR codes, and more.

Important: The email editor does not auto-save. Be sure to click Save as Draft before moving on.

Step 5: Preview and Review

Before sending, the system provides a preview of your email in both desktop and mobile views. You can also send yourself a test email — highly recommended to catch any formatting issues before it goes out.

Step 6: Send or Schedule

• Send immediately for urgent communications
• Schedule for a future date and time to plan your email calendar in advance — great for batching multiple emails at once and setting them to go out automatically

Marketing vs. Transactional Emails

Understanding this distinction is important for proper deliverability and compliance.

Marketing emails are used to promote your event, sell merchandise, highlight sponsors, or re-engage past participants. Examples include early registration announcements, price increase reminders, or sponsor spotlights.

Transactional emails are event-specific communications that participants need to receive. Examples include bib pickup details, course maps, water station locations, weather updates, and pre-race instructions.

Always select the correct type when building your email — it affects how the email is classified and delivered.

Additional Features Inside Email V2

Custom Lists

Import contact data from other platforms or external sources (such as a charity partner list) and create custom lists that can be used as recipients when sending emails. Lists can be built by importing a file or adding contacts one by one.

Templates

Save any email you build as a reusable template. Access system templates, pre-built RunSignup templates, or your own saved designs — all in one place. An image gallery is also available so uploaded images carry over across all your emails.

Manage Emails

View and manage all sent, scheduled, and draft emails from one centralized location. A helpful way to stay organized across your full email calendar.

Email Capture

An optional popup tool that can be added to your race page to collect email addresses from visitors who haven’t yet registered. Similar to a lead capture popup on a retail or recipe website — visitors opt in, and you grow your list.

Automated Emails

Three automated email types are available and can be turned on with a single toggle:

• Abandoned registration — re-engages people who started but didn’t complete registration
• Post-registration follow-up — nurtures new registrants after they sign up
• Price increase reminders — alerts participants when a registration price tier is about to change

These emails are pre-written and ready to go. Customization is optional. Turning them on requires no ongoing effort and is strongly recommended — research consistently shows it takes multiple touchpoints before someone makes a purchasing decision, and these automations do that work for you.

Reporting & Analytics

Email V2 includes a full reporting dashboard with:

• Deliverability rates
• Open rates
• Click rates
• Filtering and sorting tools to identify what’s working and what isn’t

Getting Started

No setup or activation is required. Email V2 is already enabled on your account. Simply:

1. Log into RunSignup
2. Go to your race dashboard
3. Click Email Marketing V2
4. Start building

Just make sure you are working within Email Marketing V2 specifically — not the original email marketing tab — to access all of the features covered in this session.

Note: Emails created in the original email system cannot be imported into Email V2. Content will need to be manually recreated or copied over.

Key Takeaways

• Email V2 is free, mobile-friendly, and built specifically for event organizers
• It can replace your current third-party email tool without sacrificing features
• Use the drag-and-drop builder, pre-built templates, or your own HTML
• Always distinguish between marketing and transactional email types
• Schedule emails in batches to save time throughout your event season
• Turn on automated emails — they’re easy to enable and consistently drive more registrations
• Use reporting data to refine your strategy over time