RunSignup 101: Race Renewal

Event Information

Your race wrapped up — now what? Renewing your event on RunSignup is one of the most important things you can do to keep momentum going and give yourself the maximum time to grow registrations for next year.

In this RunSignup 101, we’ll walk through the steps to successfully renew your event, manage participants from the previous year, and set your race up for an even stronger season ahead.

Key topics include:

• Copying Your Race for a New Year
• Updating Dates, Pricing, and Event Details
• Managing Refunds, Deferrals, and Postponements
• Participant Self-Service Options
• Using Pricing and Marketing Tools to Drive Early Registrations
• And More!

This session is designed for newer race directors, but even experienced users might learn something new. We’ll answer questions throughout the webinar. The webinar will be recorded and sent out to all registrants.

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Webinar Overview

This RunSignup 101 webinar, presented by Whitney Taylor from the RunSignup onboarding team, explains the race renewal process—why race directors should renew an existing event instead of creating a new one, how to complete the renewal, and when to do it. The core message is that renewal is a simple process that preserves valuable historical data and settings while saving significant setup time.

The webinar breaks renewal into three main questions: Why renew? How do you renew? When should you renew?

Race Dashboard Basics

Before covering renewals, the webinar reviews the Race Dashboard, since this is the primary location for managing an event on RunSignup. Race directors can access their races through My Races, through the Director’s Links on their profile, or directly through the Race Dashboard when logged in.

Two dashboard search tools are highlighted:

• The right-side search is for finding participants by information such as name or email.
• The left-side search is for finding RunSignup functionality and settings. For example, searching “QR code” or “discount code” will surface the relevant dashboard pages.

Because RunSignup offers many features, the recommendation is to focus on the functionality an event actually needs rather than enabling features simply because they’re available.

Why Renew Instead of Creating a New Race?

The biggest reason to renew is time savings, but renewal also provides significant benefits for SEO, historical reporting, marketing, and audience development.

Preserve the Race URL and SEO

Renewing allows an event to retain its existing race URL. Maintaining that URL year after year helps preserve and build its search-engine presence instead of starting over with a new event URL each year.

Keep Year-Over-Year Data Together

Renewal keeps historical event data in the same dashboard, allowing race directors to compare performance across years without downloading and combining separate spreadsheets.

RunSignup’s year-over-year reporting can provide insight into registrations, transactions, donations, referrals, returning participants, and participant churn. This can help organizers determine whether they are ahead or behind previous years and identify opportunities for additional marketing.

Build a Larger Marketing Audience

Keeping an event together through renewals also creates an increasingly valuable participant audience. Rather than starting from scratch each year, organizers retain access to previous participants and can use RunSignup’s email marketing tools to reach current, previous-year, and past participants.

Carry Forward Existing Settings

Renewal also preserves much of the work already completed in prior years. During the process, RunSignup asks which existing settings and features should be copied into the new year, reducing repetitive setup work.

How to Renew a Race

The actual renewal process is intentionally simple.

A past race can be renewed in two primary ways: from My Races, using the dropdown/arrow and selecting Renew, or from within the race’s dashboard using the prominent Renew button.

Once the renewal process starts:

1. Review the new event dates and times.
2. Confirm that those dates are correct.
3. Choose whether to accept RunSignup’s recommended settings from the previous year or customize which settings should carry forward.
4. Save the renewal.
5. Review any additional recommended features.
6. Finish the process and return to the Race Dashboard.

After renewal, the event does not have to be completely configured immediately. Organizers can return days or months later to update additional settings—the important first step is getting the new event year established correctly.

Don’t Just Change the Race Date

One of the webinar’s strongest warnings is not to manually change the old race’s date to the following year instead of renewing it.

Doing this leaves previous-year participants and other information associated with what is supposed to be the new event year. For example, a race director could change the event date to 2027 but still see hundreds of participants registered from the 2026 event.

The correct solution is to use the actual Renew workflow, which establishes the new event year while retaining historical data appropriately.

Recommended Features During Renewal

After renewal, RunSignup may prompt organizers to enable commonly used features that can help grow the event or reduce manual work.

Examples mentioned in the webinar include incomplete registration emails, price increase emails, referral rewards, and event insurance. These are presented as relatively easy features organizers can configure and then allow RunSignup to manage automatically.

Post-Renewal Checklist

Renewing the race isn’t the end of the process. Race directors should review the event to ensure that information copied from the previous year is still accurate.

Important items include:

• Event description and dates.
• Location information.
• Giveaways and inventory.
• Race website content.
• Registration pricing and price increases.
• Fast Registration/check-in settings, when used.

The race website deserves particular attention because participants may visit it long before registration opens. Even if registration remains in draft mode, publishing accurate information about the next event date allows participants to begin planning.

When Should You Renew?

There isn’t one universal renewal date. The webinar identifies three reasonable approaches.

Immediately after the event: Renew while participants are still excited about the race and use that momentum to begin promoting the next year’s event.

Once the next date is confirmed: This is particularly useful for events that need permits, certifications, or other approvals before committing to a date. Once the date is known, the event can be renewed and the website updated even if registration isn’t open yet.

Once the entire event plan is ready: Some organizers prefer to wait until pricing, dates, marketing materials, and other details are finalized. That’s also acceptable.

The general recommendation, however, is sooner rather than later. The webinar suggests giving participants roughly six to nine months of visibility when possible, particularly because runners may need time to plan and train.

Don’t Just Renew—Relaunch

One of the webinar’s key marketing recommendations is to treat renewal as an opportunity to relaunch the event, rather than quietly turning registration back on.

Organizers should consider developing an email marketing strategy, scheduling launch emails, promoting registration opening, and creating incentives for early registration. Early-bird pricing or special pricing for the first 20, 50, or 100 participants are examples provided in the webinar.

Renewal then gives organizers the historical data needed to compare the new launch against previous years.

Additional Renewal Best Practices

Several other settings deserve attention during the renewal process.

If the event accepts donations, organizers should verify that the donation period is correct for the new year.

The payment account must also be active and correctly associated with the race. An outdated or missing payment account can prevent the event from being renewed successfully.

Finally, organizers should perform a test registration before launching. Check that:

• All dates reference the new event year.
• Pricing is correct.
• Event information is current.
• The confirmation email doesn’t contain outdated information.

Key Takeaways

The webinar’s main recommendation is straightforward: renew an existing RunSignup race rather than creating a new race every year.

The ideal workflow is:

Renew → Review Dates → Select Settings to Copy → Update Event Details → Verify Payment/Donation Settings → Update Website → Test Registration → Relaunch & Market

Renewal preserves the race’s URL and historical information, builds a more useful year-over-year dataset, retains the participant audience for future marketing, and saves organizers from rebuilding their event configuration from scratch.

The most important mistakes to avoid are manually changing last year’s event dates instead of renewing, leaving outdated information on the race website, overlooking the payment account or donation periods, and reopening registration without testing the participant experience.

Ultimately, renewal isn’t just an administrative task. The webinar positions it as an opportunity to save time, leverage historical data, reconnect with past participants, and intentionally launch the next edition of the event.