Head Start

It is May 2022 and whatever hopes and expectations we’ve all had of 2022 at the end of last year have started to materialize - or have they? It’s difficult to say how strongly our industry’s recovery towards pre-pandemic levels has fared so far this year, particularly when we all individually get to see only parts of the bigger picture.

Well, today I’m delighted to be joined by two industry insiders who get to see as much of the bigger picture as any in our industry - Bob Bickel, Founder of US registrations market-leader RunSignup and Chris Robb, CEO of Mass Participation World and a passionate advocate for the endurance events industry.

Chris and Bob come armed with data and a deep understanding of our industry and where it’s currently at, and they’ll be discussing with me the latest data on event numbers and registration trends, as well as more profound questions, like “Is it time for race directors to be raising prices?” - a question I’m sure many of you are asking yourselves.

In this episode:

• Market recovery continues, but lagging prior expectations for 2022
• The effect of Omicron and erosion of trust on race participation
• Have people fallen out of love with racing?
• The knock-on effect of losing early sign-ups on overall registrations
• Race director sentiment: from optimism to survival mode
• The risk of operational know-how loss for the industry
• Why are runners not getting back to start lines? 
• Update on participant no-show rates
• The effect of local authority staff turnover on race permitting and event support provision
• Is local business and local community support for races waning?
• Industry lobbying efforts throughout the pandemic
• Non-returning race rates before and during the pandemic
• Financial stresses for mid-tier organizers and the tough 6 months ahead
• Is it time for race directors to raise prices?
• Bridging the disconnect between events and participants through year-round participant engagement
• Sponsor sentiment and the shift towards performance-based sponsorships
• Market forecasts for the next two years

Many thanks to our podcast sponsors, RunSignup and Racecheck, for supporting our efforts to provide great, free content to the race director community:

RunSignup are the leading all-in-one technology solution for endurance and fundraising events. More than 26,000 in-person, virtual, and hybrid events use RunSignup's free and integrated solution to save time, grow their events, and raise more. Find out more at https://runsignup.com/.

Racecheck can help you collect and showcase your participant reviews on your race website, helping you more easily convert website visitors into paying participants, with the help of their Racecheck Review Box. Download yours for free today at https://organisers.racecheck.com/.

You can find more resources on anything and everything related to race directing on our website RaceDirectorsHQ.com.

You can also share your questions about today’s discussion or anything else in our Facebook group, Race Directors Hub.

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When it comes to marketing events, text marketing - or SMS marketing, as it’s often known - is just about as controversial as it gets. Some people have used it and absolutely love the high engagement rate and ROI SMS marketing campaigns provide, others don’t want anything to do with it and positively cringe at the idea of marketing their event over so personal a channel.

Well, over the next hour and a half we are going to be going deep into the technology, the arguments and the facts around SMS marketing with my two expert guests, Gerry Perez of RunGP and Endurance Marketing Founder Beth Salinger. We’re going to be looking at how SMS marketing campaigns work, the pros and cons of using SMS over, or alongside, other marketing channels like email and social media, and how SMS can be used to reactivate customer databases like your unproductive mailing list.

In this episode:

• SMS marketing as another tool in your marketing stack
• SMS marketing's spectacular open rates and how to compare them to email open rates
• Examples of SMS campaigns: when to send them, how often, and what to include in them
• Getting the most out of your SMS campaigns with limited-time offers 
• Responding to customer replies, following up and nurturing people through conversations
• SMS marketing conversion rates and how to interpret them
• Integrating your SMS marketing with your registration platform, Zapier for better attribution, ROI-tracking
• Reactivating customer databases through SMS
• SMS copy best practices: identifying yourself as the sender, using clear calls-to-action, using emojis, personalizing your messages
• Funnelling cold leads from Facebook ads into SMS nurturing campaigns
• Building up your SMS marketing list: subscribing website visitors, obtaining user consent, drawing users from social media, using incentives, using QR codes
• The cost of running SMS campaigns

Many thanks to our podcast sponsors, RunSignup and Racecheck, for supporting our efforts to provide great, free content to the race director community:

RunSignup are the leading all-in-one technology solution for endurance and fundraising events. More than 26,000 in-person, virtual, and hybrid events use RunSignup's free and integrated solution to save time, grow their events, and raise more. Find out more at https://runsignup.com/.

Racecheck can help you collect and showcase your participant reviews on your race website, helping you more easily convert website visitors into paying participants, with the help of their Racecheck Review Box. Download yours for free today at https://organisers.racecheck.com/.

You can find more resources on anything and everything related to race directing on our website RaceDirectorsHQ.com.

You can also share your questions about marketing or anything else in our Facebook group, Race Directors Hub.

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Does your race employ a race announcer? Chances are probably not. You may think that your race is not big enough to have one or that the money spent on a race announcer could be better spent elsewhere - or not spent at all, if you run a for-profit race or raising money for a charity or cause close to your heart.

Well, today we’re going to try and give you some reasons to reconsider with the help of my guests, professional announcers Fitz Koehler and Steve Fleck. We’re going to be looking at the many things race announcers do on race day, how they contribute to the race experience, and how they can make your race an event to remember.

In this episode:

• The difference a voice can make: how race announcers elevate the race experience
• Should even smaller races have a race announcer?
• From start to finish: what a race announcer does throughout race day
• Expert tips on race announcing: gathering participants' background info/stories, pacing yourself, engaging spectators
• Name pronunciations, mis-gendering and avoiding finish line faux pas!
• The importance of hiring announcers who understand races
• Hiring a race announcer: where to find one, what you get and what it costs

Links:

• Find and hire a race announcer: https://www.racedirectorshq.com/us/emcees-announcers/ 

Many thanks to our podcast sponsors, RunSignup and Racecheck, for supporting our efforts to provide great, free content to the race director community:

RunSignup are the leading all-in-one technology solution for endurance and fundraising events. More than 26,000 in-person, virtual, and hybrid events use RunSignup's free and integrated solution to save time, grow their events, and raise more. Find out more at https://runsignup.com/.

Racecheck can help you collect and showcase your participant reviews on your race website, helping you more easily convert website visitors into paying participants, with the help of their Racecheck Review Box. Download yours for free today at https://organisers.racecheck.com/.

You can find more resources on anything and everything related to race directing on our website RaceDirectorsHQ.com.

You can also share your questions about race announcers, the race day experience or anything else in our Facebook group, Race Directors Hub.

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What do the Marine Corps Marathon, Air Force Marathon and Army Ten Miler all have in common? They are, of course, amazing races put on to celebrate branches of the US Military that attract tens of thousands of participants every year.

Well, there’s a new race in town for 2022, set to celebrate the youngest of all military branches: the Space Force. The aptly named Space Force T-Minus 10-Miler is set to take place this December 10th at historic Cape Canaveral, and we’re going to be hearing all about it from the event’s own race director Brandon Hough in today’s star-spangled bonus episode. 

So get ready for some military race history, rockets, alligators, more rockets, and some very interesting insights into working as a race director within the US government.

In this episode:

• Military races: how it all begun with the Marine Corps Marathon
• NAFIs and the legal structure of military races
• The challenges of putting on a race inside the US government/military
• The birth and mission of the US Space Force
• Conceiving and launching the Space Force T-Minus 10-Miler
• Mapping out a race course around historic Cape Canaveral
• What to expect from the inaugural race (hint: more than rockets and alligators, although there's definitely plenty of those!)
• The Sea, Air & Space Challenge

Many thanks to our podcast sponsors, RunSignup and Racecheck, for supporting our efforts to provide great, free content to the race director community:

RunSignup are the leading all-in-one technology solution for endurance and fundraising events. More than 26,000 in-person, virtual, and hybrid events use RunSignup's free and integrated solution to save time, grow their events, and raise more. Find out more at https://runsignup.com/.

Racecheck can help you collect and showcase your participant reviews on your race website, helping you more easily convert website visitors into paying participants, with the help of their Racecheck Review Box. Download yours for free today at https://organisers.racecheck.com/.

You can find more resources on anything and everything related to race directing on our website RaceDirectorsHQ.com.

You can also share your questions about today's discussion or anything else in our Facebook group, Race Directors Hub.

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It is by now abundantly clear that some of the ways we have all been used to doing things, including organizing races, are just not sustainable for the planet in the long term. And it is increasingly obvious to race directors and participants alike that traveling long distances to and from events, going through scores of single-use plastic bottles, and sending tons of waste to landfill is taking its toll on the environment and the communities we all strive to support.

For over a decade, the Council for Responsible Sport has supported mass-participation sports’ sustainability transition through its industry-leading certification program and the development of the industry’s first responsible sport standards.

And today, I have the pleasure of catching up with the Council’s Executive Director, Shelley Villalobos, on the Council’s recent initiatives to encourage even more race directors to take their first steps towards environmental sustainability, including the launch of ReScore, a free app that can help any race organizer plan, track and achieve their sustainability goals step by step through a single online platform.

In this episode:

• The origins and mission of the Council for Responsible Sport
• How the Council of Responsible Sport is governed and funded
• Race sustainability efforts around the world
• Developing sustainability standards and best practices
• Responsible event certification, what it costs and the process for getting your race certified
• Getting certified with the help of a corporate sustainability sponsor
• Leveraging your race's environmental credentials to promote your event's purpose
• Mitigating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and carbon offsetting
• Incorporating the cost of reducing GHG emissions from participant travel into the event registration cost
• Reducing single-use plastic waste: using and effectively disposing of compostable water cups, allowing water backpacks, cupless racing, Ooho!
• ReScore: the free app that helps you collaborate, track your progress and access relevant resources as you work towards making your race more sustainable

Links:

• CRS Responsible Sport Standards: https://www.councilforresponsiblesport.org/standards
• CRS Responsible Events Guide: https://www.councilforresponsiblesport.org/runrad
• ReScore: https://portal.sportrescore.org/
• Project Drawdown: https://drawdown.org/

Many thanks to our podcast sponsors, RunSignup and Racecheck, for supporting our efforts to provide great, free content to the race director community:

RunSignup are the leading all-in-one technology solution for endurance and fundraising events. More than 26,000 in-person, virtual, and hybrid events use RunSignup's free and integrated solution to save time, grow their events, and raise more. Find out more at https://runsignup.com/.

Racecheck can help you collect and showcase your participant reviews on your race website, helping you more easily convert website visitors into paying participants, with the help of their Racecheck Review Box. Download yours for free today at https://organisers.racecheck.com/.

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It’s probably not an overstatement to say that volunteers are the backbone of every successful race. They are the people that make much of race day happen and, yet, recruiting and managing volunteers, training them properly and retaining them for the long run remains a constant headache for race directors of all levels of experience.

Well, today we’re going to try and make everyone’s life a little bit easier by going over some great tips and strategies for streamlining your volunteer recruitment and fine-tuning all aspects of your volunteer management. We’ll discuss tips for balancing your volunteer load across volunteer shifts, creating mega shifts with enough buffer to make sure you’ve got all the people you need on race day, and some tried-and-tested tactics to mitigate volunteer attrition.

My guest for today’s discussion, Tim Bradley, is the volunteer coordinator for the McCourt Foundation, organizers of the Los Angeles Marathon and other marquee races. Tim has recruited and managed thousands of volunteers over the years and, as you’ll see, he has developed a very specific approach to running volunteer programs, based on evidence and experimentation. 

In this episode:

• What motivates volunteers to volunteer for a race
• Volunteer recruitment for for-profit vs nonprofit races
• The cost of recruiting and managing volunteers: donations, free entries, shirts, meals, transportation
• What volunteers can and can't do for your race
• Organizing your volunteer force: flat vs hierarchical team structures
• Qualities to look for in your group captains and super-volunteers
• Tim's detailed volunteer recruitment plan/schedule
• Recruiting individual volunteers vs recruiting volunteer groups
• Load balancing, mega shifts and diversification: making sure your shifts fill up evenly across the board
• The importance of mega shifts and shift buffers/padding for mitigating volunteer attrition on race day
• Working out how many volunteers you'll need for your race
• Recruiting volunteers through email, social media, paid ads, text messages, cold calling, volunteer marketplaces
• Building a volunteer mailing list 
• Signing up volunteers from your past race participants 
• Recruiting groups of volunteers from high school service clubs, sports teams
• How to link to your volunteer program/sign up page from your website
• Reducing friction throughout your volunteer signup process
• Singing in and briefing volunteers on race day
• Practical food/snack ideas for volunteers and how to distribute them on race day
• "Thank you" emails and issuing volunteer service verification letters

Many thanks to our podcast sponsors, RunSignup and Racecheck, for supporting our efforts to provide great, free content to the race director community:

RunSignup are the leading all-in-one technology solution for endurance and fundraising events. More than 26,000 in-person, virtual, and hybrid events use RunSignup's free and integrated solution to save time, grow their events, and raise more. Find out more at https://runsignup.com/.

Racecheck can help you collect and showcase your participant reviews on your race website, helping you more easily convert website visitors into paying participants, with the help of their Racecheck Review Box. Download yours for free today at https://organisers.racecheck.com/.

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On February 17, former president of the Portland Marathon, Lester Smith, was indicted by a grand jury on charges of wire fraud and tax evasion. In the indictment, Smith, who has led the Portland Marathon as both president and race director since 1982, is accused of embezzling more than $1 million dollars from the race’s coffers to fund his personal luxury lifestyle.

Today, we’ll be looking back at the story of Lester Smith and his time at the Portland Marathon, the legal cases brought against him and the impact events have had on the Portland running community and the Portland Marathon.

With me to discuss the facts and implications from the case is Jeff Manning, a runner and veteran investigative reporter from the Oregonian who has followed the Lester Smith case closely since it first broke in 2018. So stick around for a fascinating dive into the Portland Marathon story.

In this episode:

• How Lester Smith evaded detection to misappropriate more than $1 million from the Portland Marathon from 2012-2018
• Smith's track record at the helm of the race
• Details of Smith's $850k settlement with the Oregon in DoJ in 2018
• The allegations in the federal grand jury indictment brought against him in Feb 2022
• The impact the legal turmoil has had on the local community and the Portland Marathon

Thanks to our sponsors, RunSignup and Racecheck for supporting quality content for race directors by sponsoring this episode.

To learn more about RunSignup's awesome all-in-one technology solution for endurance and fundraising events, supporting more than 26,000 in-person, virtual, and hybrid events, visit runsignup.com.

And, to see how Racecheck's Review Box can help your race increase registrations by a massive 20%, using the power of race reviews and social proof, make sure to visit organisers.racecheck.com.

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What’s in a brand? Is it the sleek logo with the matching color palette and catchy tagline? Is it your organization’s mission statement and your event’s core values? Or is it every single thing that makes your event a memorable experience for your participants on race day?

Well, according to my guest today, event branding expert Peter Abraham, your brand is all of the above and a whole lot more. It is the heart and soul of your event, and what it aspires to be for your team, your participants, your stakeholders and the rest of the world. And, at a practical level, your brand is the North Star in every decision you make about your event, from your logo and the contents of your swag bag to your choice of sponsors and the design of your race course.

Today,  we have a lot of unpacking to do. We’re going to be looking at understanding what your event’s brand is and how you can develop it, we’re going to be discussing your organization’s mission statement (and how to come up with one, if you don’t have one already) and we’re going to be tying all that back to laying out your marketing plan and finding your event’s unique voice.

In today's episode:

• What makes up a brand
• Why your brand needs a point of view
• Avoiding the trap of being all things to all people
• Consistency as a cornerstone of your branding
• Don't be different for the sake of it - be different for a reason
• How is your brand solving you participants' problems?
• The importance of having a robust mission statement
• Using your mission statement to make decisions on everything you do: designing a logo, mapping your course, conducting yourself in public
• Writing a good mission statement: What do you do? And how do you do it?
• Going from your mission statement to a marketing plan
• Telling the story of your race experience through your marketing campaigns

Thanks to RunSignup for supporting quality content for race directors by sponsoring this episode. More than 25,000 in-person, virtual, and hybrid events use RunSignup's free and integrated solution to save time, grow their events, and raise more. If you'd like to learn more about RunSignup's all-in-one technology solution for endurance and fundraising events visit runsignup.com.

You can find more resources on anything and everything related to race directing on our website RaceDirectorsHQ.com.

You can also share your questions about branding, marketing or anything else in our Facebook group, Race Directors Hub.

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Why do some of your marketing campaigns work and others don’t? Why do you yourself as a consumer respond a lot more favorably to some types of messages and not others? At the end of the day, what makes us all take our wallets out and pull the trigger on that next purchase?

The answer to all those questions more often than not comes down to psychology. We are programmed to respond to certain queues - what our peers say about a product, how scarce that product feels, or how likeable the brand selling to us appears - in ways that we ourselves often don’t fully understand.

Today we have an absolutely fascinating discussion for you on all those triggers that make marketing campaigns work, and how you can bring the best of those lessons to your event marketing. We’re going to be touching, among other things, on using race testimonials as social proof, early-bird pricing & price increases, the role of influencers and celebrity runners, and how you can use freebies to increase your registrations and grow your mailing list.

My guest today is Andy Reilly. Andy is the CEO of event marketing company EventGrow and the President of race listing site, Raceplace.com, and he is super-passionate about the subject of marketing psychology and its foundational importance in developing an effective marketing strategy. 

In this episode:

• Why do people buy stuff? What influences their purchasing decisions? 
• Robert Cialdini's 6 psychological influence triggers: reciprocity, commitment & consistency, social proof, authority, scarcity, likeability
• Reciprocity: winning over participants by giving something of value to them for free 
• Reciprocity in practice: leveraging free training plans and exclusive discount codes to grow your mailing list; using freebies to increase your race survey response rate by 20%
• Commitment & consistency: aligning your messaging with your participants' goals 
• Commitment & consistency in practice: supporting people's fitness aspirations; promoting your race's PB potential
• Social proof: converting people through the power of peer influence
• Social proof in practice: making the most of past participant reviews; showcasing testimonials on your site; including social proof stats in your ad copy
• Building social proof: collecting testimonials from race surveys; encouraging participants to leave reviews on race review sites
• Authority: recruiting authority figures to promote your event
• Authority in practice: leveraging the power of celebrity participants; using influencers to promote your race; projecting brand authority through high-profile sponsorships; showcasing event awards
• Scarcity: using loss-aversion (aka FOMO!) to drive registrations 
• Scarcity in practice: early birds & price increases; the "100 spots left" playbook
• Likeability: making your brand more likeable
• Likeability in practice: speaking your audience's language; aligning your event with good causes; recruiting likeable personalities to your event; engaging with your participants online 

Thanks to RunSignup for supporting quality content for race directors by sponsoring this episode. More than 25,000 in-person, virtual, and hybrid events use RunSignup's free and integrated solution to save time, grow their events, and raise more.

You can find more resources on anything and everything related to race directing on our website RaceDirectorsHQ.com.

You can also share your questions about marketing or anything else in our Facebook group, Race Directors Hub.

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When you want to know what’s happening and trending in the endurance events industry by the numbers, where do you turn to? Well, for me and many people I know, the definitive source of event data for the industry is, and has been for some time, GiveSignup|RunSignup’s annual RaceTrends report.

The report leverages GiveSignup|RunSignup’s extensive registration data from almost 60,000 events to point to trends in event participation, event pricing, participant demographics, marketing effectiveness, technology adoption and a myriad other things.

The most recent edition of the report was out just last week, and the data does seem to point to a strong, but partial, recovery from 2020, with some numbers starting to converge to 2019 pre-pandemic levels.

With me today to discuss all the numbers, the trends and their implications for individual events and the industry as a whole I’m delighted to have GiveSignup|RunSignup’s own, Johanna Goode. Johanna is the driving force behind many great things coming out of GiveSignup|RunSignup, including the ever-improving annual RaceTrends report, so she is just the person to walk us through the insights and recommendations coming out of the 2021 numbers.

In this episode:

• A return to normal? What 2021 registration rates are suggesting for market recovery and 2022
• Event attrition/churn through the pandemic
• The impact of event cancellations/postponements on participant loyalty, and ways to mitigate it
• Repeat participation numbers and trends
• Participation by event type
• The rise and fall of virtual races through 2020-2021
• Participant demographics by gender, age, event type
• Solving the lagging Millenial/GenZ participation puzzle 
• Registration pattern shifts (are participants registering later than usual?)
• Event pricing trends, and the effect of price increases on registration rates
• Mobile adoption trends 
• Facebook, social media and participant acquisition breakdown

*** To download your free copy of the RaceTrends 2021 report go to: runsignup.com/trends ***

Thanks to GiveSignup|RunSignup for supporting quality content for race directors by sponsoring this episode. More than 22,000 in-person, virtual, and hybrid events use GiveSignup|RunSignup's free and integrated solution to save time, grow their events, and raise more. If you'd like to learn more about GiveSignup|RunSignup's all-in-one technology solution for endurance and fundraising events visit runsignup.com.

You can find more resources on anything and everything related to race directing on our website RaceDirectorsHQ.com.

You can also share your questions about about the numbers in today’s podcast, registration trends or anything else in our Facebook group, Race Directors Hub.

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