Event Information

You know how to create and send an email. Now, it’s time to create an automated email schedule that works for your event. Stop setting calendar reminders for email and create a smarter, set-it-and-forget-it email strategy.

In this webinar, we review:

• How to build out your email schedule
• Activating automated emails to create drip campaigns for marketing
• Building a year-round email strategy

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Webinar Summary

Overview

This RunSignup 201 webinar covers how to build a strategic email plan using the tools available inside RunSignup — from mapping out your full email schedule across key moments in your race calendar, to setting up automated drip campaigns that run in the background without requiring you to hit send every time. The session includes a live demo of automated email setup and wraps up with tips on replacement tags, custom templates, and list hygiene best practices.

What You’ll Learn

• Why email marketing matters and how it directly impacts registrations
• How to think about structuring your full email schedule by category
• How registration curves should influence when you send emails
• What types of emails to send and when, from launch through post-race
• How to set up automated drip campaigns using RunSignup’s three automated email types
• How to use pre-built email templates as a starting point for automated emails
• How to use replacement tags to personalize emails at scale
• Best practices for custom templates, list management, and email timing

Why Email Marketing Matters

Email is one of the most direct and effective tools available to event organizers. In 2025, 12% of registration dollars came directly from a RunSignup email — and that number doesn’t include emails sent from third-party platforms, meaning the real impact of email is even greater.

Email helps you:

• Reconnect with past participants and remind them to come back
• Encourage registered participants to spread the word and drive referrals
• Take advantage of time-based calls to action like price increases and registration deadlines
• Prepare participants for race day so they arrive informed and less stressed
• Reduce inbound questions by proactively sending key race details before people have to ask

Building Your Email Schedule

A useful way to approach your email plan is to organize potential emails into five buckets before deciding what to send and when. The number of emails you can realistically send depends on how far in advance registration opens — a marathon with an 11-month window has far more room than a 5K that opens six weeks out.

The Five Email Buckets

1. Key Registration Times Registration data shows three consistent spikes: at launch, mid-cycle (often around a price increase), and race week. About 26% of registrations happen within three days of a price increase, and roughly a quarter of all registrations come in during race week. Plan emails around these moments — especially the final push.

2. Why Register Emails These are your core marketing emails. They fall into two sub-categories:

• Strong calls to action — price increases, coupons, early bird discounts, and bundle offers. Use sparingly and with short windows to drive urgency. Never discount below what earlier registrants paid.
• Event highlights — medal reveals, course highlights, afterparty details, photos from previous years, charity spotlights, and inspiring participant stories. These don’t have to say “register now” — they just make people want to be there.

3. Registration Follow-Up Emails Sent to people who have already registered. Use these to promote referral programs, team incentives, fundraising goals, or pre-race training plans. Aim for two to three emails max — these participants are already coming and don’t need to be marketed to heavily. Pick one focus per email.

4. Logistics Emails Pre-race emails (week before, day before) with course maps, packet pickup details, parking, bib pickup, and other key race-day information. Post-race emails with results links, photos, surveys, and upcoming events. Pre-built email templates are a great starting point here to make sure you don’t miss important replacement tags like the QR code for check-in.

Tip: If registration is still open when your final pre-race email goes out, copy key race day details into your registration confirmation email so late registrants still receive that information.

5. Emergency Emails You can’t plan for emergencies, but you can prepare. Keep a draft emergency email template ready to go so that when something unexpected happens, you have a starting point and can move quickly.

When to Send: Does Timing Matter?

Honestly, not as much as you might think. People check email at different times throughout the day, and there is not a strong correlation between send time and registrations. That said, about 57% of registrations happen between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m., with a solid chunk in the evening as well. One thing to avoid: sending right at 8 a.m., when inboxes tend to be flooded from the night before and your email is more likely to get buried.

Four Ways to Send Emails in RunSignup

Automated Emails: The Core of Your Drip Campaign

Automated emails are what make a true drip campaign possible. Instead of sending on a fixed date, you can trigger emails based on when someone registers — making communication feel timely and relevant to each individual participant. There are three types available in RunSignup.

1. Incomplete Registration Emails (Abandoned Cart)

Sent to people who started the registration process but didn’t complete it. RunSignup captures enough information to follow up with them automatically.

Recommendations:

• Send one email within 24 hours of the abandoned registration — many people simply forgot to hit submit
• Send a second reminder before registration closes as a final nudge
• Keep the copy short — they already know about your race, they just didn’t finish
• Customize the default text to match your event’s voice and tone
• Avoid language that sounds like you were spying on them — keep it friendly, not overbearing

Impact: Typically drives 2–4% of registrations — small but meaningful, and easy to set up.

Sample copy approaches:

• Friendly reminder: “Hey, looks like you didn’t quite finish — we saved your spot!”
• Urgency-based: “Registration closes soon — don’t miss your chance.”
• Benefit-forward: “Still on the fence? Here’s why runners love [Race Name].”

2. Price Increase Emails

Automatically triggered when a price increase is approaching. Two versions go out:

• To current participants — Thanks them for registering and encourages them to invite friends before the price goes up (great for referral program promotion)
• To past participants who haven’t yet registered — Encourages them to come back before the price increases

Recommendations:

• Send once before each price increase
• Use the automated pricing table built into email marketing — it pulls directly from your RunSignup data, eliminates typos, and ensures compliance with fee transparency laws in applicable states
• If you have an email capture list from your race page, add it to this send to reach people who haven’t participated before
• For past participants, use replacement tags (like first name) to personalize the message
• These emails can be a little longer than abandoned cart emails — use the opportunity to highlight what’s great about your event

3. Registration Follow-Up Emails

Sent to people after they complete registration. These are blank — there’s no preset template because the content is entirely up to you based on your priorities.

Recommendations:

• Limit to two to three emails — they’re already registered, don’t overwhelm them
• Pick one focus per email: referrals, team sign-ups, fundraising, training programs, or race-day excitement
• Space them out using the interval settings (e.g., three days after registering, one week after registering, and one email during race week)
• Personalize with replacement tags so participants feel like the email was meant for them
• Use these to build excitement and engagement leading up to race day, not just to sell more things

Setting Up Automated Emails: Key Steps

1. Navigate to Email V2 > Automated Emails from your race dashboard (or use the menu search bar)
2. Select the automated email type you want to enable and toggle it on
3. Save first before editing — the edit option becomes available after the automated email is enabled and saved
4. Set your send interval (immediately, minutes, hours, or days before/after the trigger) or a specific date
5. Adjust your recipient list if needed — for price increase and follow-up emails, you can add custom lists or email capture signups
6. Edit the email content directly, or use Choose New Template to swap in a pre-built or custom template
7. Save your changes back to the automated email — look for the warning prompt to confirm your edits are saved
8. Add additional emails to the same automated flow using interval or date-based scheduling to build out a full drip sequence

Replacement Tags

Replacement tags are a powerful way to personalize your emails at scale — pulling in things like the recipient’s first name, race name, referral link, pricing tables, and more directly from your RunSignup data.

How to find available replacement tags:

• On the email setup page, available placeholders are listed on the content screen
• Inside the email editor, use the Placeholders menu to browse all options
• Or type a % sign and start typing — the system will surface matching tags as you go

Link vs. URL tags: For anything that functions as a link, use the link version of the tag (displays linked text) rather than the URL version (displays the full URL). Choose based on how you want it to appear in the email.

Important: Replacement tags are dynamic and depend on your recipient list. If you haven’t selected a recipient group yet, you’ll see very few tags. Add your recipient list first, then check what tags are available for that audience.

Custom Templates

• Build templates from scratch, start from a pre-built email, or import HTML from a designer or previous platform
• Once built, templates can be saved and exported across multiple races — useful if you manage several events with similar branding
• Saved templates can be used in automated emails by selecting Choose New Template inside the automated email editor

Email List Best Practices

RunSignup’s past participant system lists only go back three years — and that’s intentional:

• Spam filters have become significantly more sophisticated and penalize sends to disengaged or inactive addresses
• Older email addresses are more likely to be abandoned, invalid, or converted into spam traps
• Sticking to the last three years helps protect your sender reputation and deliverability

For custom lists you’ve uploaded yourself, RunSignup doesn’t know how old those are — that cleaning is up to you. Regularly audit your custom lists to remove addresses that are stale or unverified.

To grow your list of engaged, opted-in contacts, use the Email Capture form on your race page to collect addresses from visitors who are interested but haven’t yet registered.

Email Reporting and Performance Tracking

• Sent email performance (opens, clicks, etc.) is available under Email Statistics in Email V2
• For a more complete picture of which emails are actually driving registrations, use the Race Insights dashboard and set a date range — this will show email title, page views, registrations, and revenue attributed to each email on a last-click basis
• Automated emails may not appear in the standard sent email view — check the automated email schedule to review timing and configuration

Key Takeaways

• Map out your full email plan by bucket before scheduling anything — it helps you prioritize and avoid over-sending
• Price increases and race week are your highest-impact registration windows — make sure you have emails planned around both
• Automated emails let you set it and forget it — recipient lists are always dynamic, so they stay accurate without manual updates
• Use incomplete registration, price increase, and registration follow-up emails together to build a complete drip campaign
• Replacement tags make personalization easy and scalable — always select your recipient list before looking for available tags
• Keep past participant sends within the last three years to protect your deliverability and sender reputation
• Pre-built templates are a fast, reliable starting point — especially for logistics and price increase emails