RunSignup Timer Certification

Event Information

The RunSignup platform has a lot to offer timers — and this two-hour live course makes sure you’re up to speed on the features that matter most.

We’ll walk through the latest RunSignup tools and updates most relevant to your work as a timer, so you can better support your races, answer director questions confidently, and grow your business.

We’ll cover topics including:

• Race Dashboard — getting the most out of your timer view and race management tools
• Custom website building — creating professional, mobile-friendly event sites
• Email marketing — sending campaigns, automating communications, and tracking performance
• Discounts and promotions — coupons, price rules, and registration incentives
• Groups and teams registration — setup, management, and best practices
• AI ChatBot — how the participant-facing chatbot works and what it means for your races
• And more

Whether you’re new to RunSignup or have been on the platform for years, this course is designed to make sure you’re getting the most out of everything available to you.

Completing this course counts toward your RunSignup Timer Certification.

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Overview

The 2026 RunSignup Timer Certification is a refreshed and streamlined certification course designed to help timers become more knowledgeable about the RunSignup platform and expand the services they can offer race directors. The training goes beyond timing itself, covering registration setup, marketing and promotional tools, participant management, reporting, and other platform functionality that timers can use to provide more value to events.

A major theme throughout the certification is that modern timing companies can strengthen their businesses by becoming more than race-day timing providers. By mastering RunSignup’s tools, timers can help races grow registrations, improve the participant experience, simplify race management, and potentially create additional revenue streams for their own businesses.

Why Timer Certification Matters

Timing alone is increasingly not enough to differentiate or retain race clients. According to data shared in the webinar, 71% of timers offer services beyond timing, with registration setup and management being the most common additional service. The webinar also notes that 42% offer email marketing and 31% offer custom websites.

Certification helps timers build the platform knowledge necessary to become a stronger resource for their race directors. This includes understanding registration flows, participant management, reporting, websites, marketing, and RaceDay tools. The more services a timer provides, the more connections they create with an event, helping strengthen customer relationships and retention.

Timer Accounts & Certification Requirements

Timers must have a RunSignup timer account associated with the email address they use for certification because certification badges are connected to that account.

Each individual at a timing company should ideally have their own account under their own name, rather than relying on one shared company login. This allows RunSignup to better track access, questions, and communication with individual users.

Why Offer RunSignup Registration

One of the primary benefits of offering RunSignup registration is integrated participant data. Registration information can automatically flow into tools such as the RaceDay CheckIn App, RaceDay Scoring, and RaceJoy, creating a more accurate and efficient source of participant data.

Timers can also package registration and related services into their business offerings. Free RunSignup tools—including websites, email marketing, check-in, bib assignment, results, photos, virtual events, and challenges—give timers opportunities to offer additional services while helping their races improve operations and grow participation.

Registration as a Service

The certification encourages timers to think of registration setup and management as a service, rather than simply directing race directors to a registration platform.

Timers are well positioned to act as consultants because they work with many events and see what successful races are doing. They can review a race’s setup and recommend features such as:

• Checkout donations
• Teams
• Fundraising
• Event insurance
• Better registration settings
• Improved websites
• Email campaigns
• Referral programs
• Coupons and promotional strategies

This expertise can become either an included service or an additional source of revenue.

Race Wizard & Initial Race Setup

The Race Wizard is the starting point for creating a race. Once Step 1 is saved, RunSignup creates the race dashboard, website, and associated functionality. Timers offering registration setup should understand the full wizard and how its settings impact registration and RaceDay Scoring.

The certification covers important setup practices, including keeping years such as “2026” and phrases such as “6th Annual” out of the permanent race name, selecting the correct time zone, configuring the race contact email, properly structuring events, and associating the timing company with the race.

Timers can also use third-party race setup to create an event on behalf of a customer without remaining the primary race director receiving all ongoing notifications.

Pricing & Registration Options

RunSignup supports multiple registration price periods, and the webinar recommends generally having at least two or three pricing periods. Price increases give participants a reason to register earlier and can be paired with automated marketing emails reminding people of upcoming deadlines.

Additional options allow races to configure age limits, private events, participant limits, customized data collection, waivers, and other registration rules.

Custom Questions

Custom questions allow races to collect information beyond RunSignup’s standard participant fields. Standardized questions can capture information such as emergency contacts and emergency text messaging preferences, while custom questions can collect race-specific information needed for scoring or operations.

Different question formats—including text fields, checkboxes, radio buttons, and select menus—serve different purposes. For information that needs to flow into RaceDay Scoring, radio buttons and select menus can be especially useful because they provide a single structured response.

Question logic can also create conditional registration experiences. The recommendation is to test complex registration flows with a mock registration before launching.

Giveaways & Inventory

Timers should understand how to configure giveaways such as race shirts, including sizing, pricing adjustments, and inventory.

Once merchandise is ordered, races can enter inventory by size so unavailable options automatically sell out. RunSignup’s giveaway reporting and projection tools can also help estimate how many items of each size should be ordered based on current registration patterns.

Teams & Group Registration

Teams can be used both as a marketing tool and a scoring structure.

Social teams encourage people to register together and can include incentives such as discounts or rewards after the group reaches a certain size. Scored teams should have separate group types corresponding with the appropriate RaceDay Scoring categories.

The certification also covers relay pricing, where the first participant or team captain pays the full team registration fee and subsequent members join at no additional charge.

Timers should distinguish between social/scoring teams, fundraising teams, and corporate teams because each serves a different purpose.

Race Renewal

Races should be renewed each year instead of recreated. Renewal archives the previous year’s information while bringing appropriate settings forward.

This maintains the same URL, preserves SEO value, keeps historical information together, and prevents organizers from having to replace links, QR codes, signage, and other materials every year.

Most settings can carry forward, although year-specific information may need to be updated. Dynamic website components are particularly useful because information such as event dates can automatically update with renewal, whereas dates manually entered into text must be changed each year.

Websites V2

RunSignup’s Websites V2 is presented as an important service opportunity for timers. The free website builder requires no coding and supports customizable pages, colors, fonts, logos, favicons, video banners, image galleries, sponsor blocks, Strava maps, and other components.

Timers can help race directors create more professional websites as either an included or paid marketing service.

Dynamic components can automatically display current information such as registration counts, sold-out statuses, countdown clocks, and leaderboards, reducing the amount of manual website maintenance required.

Races can also point an existing custom domain directly to their RunSignup website while maintaining branding and receiving features such as SSL and mobile optimization.

AI Chatbot & Customer Support

The certification highlights RunSignup’s AI-powered chatbot and contact tools as ways to reduce repetitive customer service work.

The chatbot can answer common questions about registration and event logistics using information from the race website and FAQ content. The AI-powered contact form can similarly attempt to answer questions about topics such as start times, price increases, refund policies, and transfers before the participant submits the inquiry.

Email Marketing

RunSignup’s built-in Email Marketing V2 is free and supports unlimited emails and contacts, custom lists, automatic email deduplication, and integration with current and previous participant data.

Timers can help race directors build campaigns using customizable templates and automated emails.

Important automated campaigns include:

• Incomplete registration emails to recover abandoned registrations.
• Price increase emails to create urgency.
• Registration follow-up emails to promote referrals, teams, social media, fundraising, and other events.

The email capture popup can also collect contact information from website visitors who aren’t ready to register, allowing races to continue marketing to them later.

Referral Rewards & Social Growth

Referral Rewards turn existing participants into promoters for the race. Participants receive unique referral links and can earn refunds or other rewards when friends register through those links.

The webinar recommends combining referrals with follow-up emails, website content, customized social sharing images, and additional rewards to keep participants promoting the event even after they’ve earned a registration refund.

Examples of rewards don’t have to be expensive merchandise—they can include benefits such as VIP parking. The important part is giving participants a meaningful reason to continue sharing.

Coupons, Discounts & Loyalty

Coupons can be used for sponsors, community partners, schools, promotions, or other groups. The webinar recommends setting expiration dates and categorizing coupons so races can later measure their effectiveness.

Auto-apply coupon links simplify the participant experience by automatically applying the discount when someone follows the promotional registration link.

RunSignup’s loyalty program can provide select participants with early or exclusive registration access. This can reward groups such as previous participants, top fundraisers, or age-group winners while creating urgency and exclusivity around registration.

Marketing Tracking & Analytics

Timers can help races understand which marketing efforts actually drive registrations.

RunSignup supports:

• QR codes and direct links
• Referral tracking
• Google Analytics 4
• Social media tracking
• Custom source tracking
• Conversion tracking
• Affiliate race calendars

Custom source tracking allows organizers to create unique URLs for different campaigns and measure the clicks and registrations generated by each source.

Donations & Fundraising

For races benefiting nonprofits, the certification recommends enabling donations directly within registration and on the race website.

Organizers can customize the donation call-to-action with images, stories, and suggested donation amounts, making fundraising a more integrated part of the participant experience.

Expanding the Timer’s Role

A recurring theme of the certification is that timers are uniquely positioned to become trusted event technology and operations partners.

Services can extend into:

• Registration setup and management
• Website creation
• Email marketing
• Referral programs
• Race growth consulting
• Race-day check-in
• Dynamic bib assignment
• Results
• Photos
• Announcer tools
• Race tracking
• Other RaceDay services

The webinar encourages timers to actively communicate these capabilities through their websites, social media, newsletters, email signatures, and post-race meetings rather than assuming race directors know what they offer.

Completing the Certification

After completing the training, timers must take a quiz. Once the quiz is submitted and passed, the timer receives the official RunSignup Certified badge associated with their timer account.

RunSignup offers four timer certifications:

1. RunSignup
2. RaceDay Scoring
3. RaceJoy
4. RaceDay CheckIn

RaceJoy certification is required for timers who want to offer RaceJoy. Timers who earn all four certification badges appear first in RunSignup’s Find a Timer search, helping demonstrate to race directors that they have been trained across RunSignup’s major RaceDay products.

Key Takeaways

The central message of the 2026 Timer Certification is that the most valuable timers do more than produce accurate results. They understand the entire event lifecycle and can help their race directors use technology to operate more efficiently, attract more participants, and deliver a stronger race experience.

The certification encourages timers to:

• Master RunSignup registration and properly structure event data.
• Expand into registration, marketing, website, and race management services.
• Use integrated RunSignup and RaceDay tools to improve data accuracy and efficiency.
• Help races grow through teams, referrals, pricing strategies, email marketing, loyalty programs, and donations.
• Renew races annually to preserve historical data and SEO.
• Become a trusted consultant rather than only a race-day vendor.
• Complete all four certifications to demonstrate expertise and improve visibility to race directors.

Ultimately, the program positions platform expertise as both a customer-retention strategy and a business-growth opportunity for timers: the more effectively a timer can help an event succeed before, during, and after race day, the more valuable—and harder to replace—that timing partner becomes.