Marketing Basics: Free Websites & Email
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RunSignup Marketing Tools to Grow Your Event
At the core of our race marketing technology is our free tools for event websites and email. Beyond those, we have a number of built-in ways you can promote your event, inspire attendees to market for you, and track the success of your campaigns.
1. Automated Referral Rewards
Referral rewards allow you to track referrals from attendees (or other sources) and automatically provide refunds to your biggest promoters. When implemented well, referral rewards can be one of the most successful marketing strategies for your event.
Best practices for a strong referral program include:
- Provide a refund reward that is attractive enough to incentivize attendees to share your event (typically $15-20).
- Set a reward threshold that is high enough to be difficult, but not impossible, to reach (typically 3-5 referrals).
- Stack rewards with additional refunds, specialty swag, or other perks only for your most productive referrers.
- Share, share, share! Your referral program will only be successful if your attendees know about it – send emails, add it to your website, and remind people on your Facebook page.
2. Incentivize with Pricing
Creative pricing setups allow you to prompt action and encourage attendees to bring their family and friends, ensuring not only more registrations, but also a more fun event experience.
Options for group pricing incentives include:
- Automated price increases based on date or number of registrations
- Multi-person and team discounts and refund options to prompt social outreach
- Age-based pricing to make events more affordable and attractive for families
- Multi-race or multi-event discounts to cultivate superfans
- Loyalty programs with early and/or discounted registration
3. Tracking and Analytics
Stop wasting money on marketing channels that aren’t working with built-in analytics to help you track your spend across various channels. In addition to adding standard tracking and conversion codes to your race website, RaceInsights Analytics tracks the source of every click, registration, and donation.
Tracking tools include:
- Automated source tracking for every action on your website with easy-to-understand tables and charts
- Custom source tracking to allow granular ROI tracking of every marketing action
- Facebook Pixel and conversion API along with a range of conversion and sitewide codes to evaluate your ad spend
4. Social Sharing Customization
Control the perception of your event by customizing your social sharing images and messaging, then enable an automatic popup to prompt your attendees to share your event.
Tips to encourage social sharing:
- Add an attention-grabbing event image to highlight how FUN your event is and grab attention
- Update your confirmation messaging to motivate purchasers to share
- Customize your default sharing language to prompt immediate action from friends and family
- Be creative and true to your brand!
5. Traditional and On Site Signage
Offer inclusive opportunities to register and engage with your event via QR codes and quick text links. These automatically created codes can be implemented on signage that you share with your community partners – or even post in the parking area on site – to provide easy opportunities for people to register on their phone.
Build more interactive signage by:
- Including a QR code to your signage that attendees can scan to immediately be taken to your race homepage, registration path, or donation option
- Adding a text message and text short code that links to your race homepage, registration path, or donation page by sending a short message to a specific number; no QR scan required
6. Branding and Storytelling
Get back to the basics and tell your race’s story. Your race website, email, and social media presence are all opportunities to build your brand by telling a consistent story about what your event is.
Key tools for storytelling include:
- Images from your events with smiling faces and fun social interactions
- Videos from your event over the years to show people what to expect
- Custom playlists to get people excited about your event
The RunSignup Marketing Philosophy
Race Marketing Video Page
More of a “show me” type than a “tell me” type? Check out all the latest videos on your free Race Marketing features, from 30-second updates to full platform demos.
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