2019: an unforgettable year at Race Roster

2019 was a very eventful year for Race Roster. Our team has worked incredibly hard to continue making strides in the endurance event industry.

Let’s revisit 19 of our most significant features and accomplishments in 2019:

1. Event organizer menu re-design

To simplify your workflow on the event organizer dashboard, we introduced a new menu design that is organized and easy to navigate. The new menu contains a responsive search bar, which has proven to be a huge help to event organizers. The search bar responds with results in real-time, allowing organizers to quickly find the setting or add-on they need. Learn more about the event organizer menu re-design.

2. Race Roster teamed up with Alan Jones to support the future of RunScore

On March 4th, 2019, Race Roster acquired RunScore to provide the platform’s users with a future path. Race Roster has continued to work with RunScore founder Alan Jones and other members of the RunScore team. We have been supporting RunScore by dedicating resources to enhancing stability, security, and third-party integrations.

3. Participant store

Race Roster introduced the Participant Store, giving you the ability to offer products, both during registration and post-registration. This feature will help you increase revenue, streamline your registration process, and build a stronger connection with your participants. Learn more about the participant store in our article: Offer products outside of registration with the participant store.

4. Photos App

Race Roster’s photo app brought you a seamless photo gallery creation experience. Collaborate with event partners to upload race photos and allow our intelligent tagging technology to do the heavy lifting for you. Add and customize watermarks, sort your photos into groups, and let participants know when they’re ready!

5. Events Overview

The events overview page on Race Roster gives you a high-level overview of your events, allowing you to quickly and easily compare relevant statistics. This page fused together the best of the “my events” page, with the “real-time events overview” page, while also including new sorting and filtering options and the ability to customize your view.

Later in 2019, we introduced saveable filtered views for the events overview page. This feature allows you to save your preferred sorting and filtering configurations as filtered views on your events overview page. Additionally, you can set your favorite filtered view as your default view!

6. Deloitte’s Fast50 Award & Fast500 Award

We are so proud of the accomplishments that our amazing team has achieved this year! It’s an incredible feeling to look back and see how much of a difference we have made in the endurance event industry. We started as a simple registration provider, but over time have evolved into a full-fledged event management and fundraising platform, allowing our customers to manage their businesses with the best tools and customer service at their fingertips.

7. Add-ons

Add-ons were introduced to the settings overview page, making it easy to see what features and settings you currently have enabled on your event, and which ones are available to be added. Recommended add-ons are included on the event organizer menu, making the features you haven’t yet enabled, but may find useful, incredibly easy to find!

8. Registration Question Metrics

Our registration question metrics dashboard brought you the ability to view a high-level overview of the answers to the questions you’ve asked on your registration forms. Having answers in an excel doc is great, but it can take a long time to gather any useful insight. With visual representations in the form of pie charts, it allows you to quickly spot important trends that can influence how you manage your event. We’ve put together an article to help you ask impactful questions: 5 great questions you should ask participants to identify race trends via registration question metrics.

9. Product Enhancements

Our products feature (swag) was given some quality attention this year. We released the ability to:

• Charge a different price for each option of a product (For example, if your base price for your standard green race t-shirt is $10.00 and you would like to sell the exclusive orange option for $12.00, add a price adjustment of $2.00.)
• Allow participants to purchase multiple products and options during registration
• Allow participants to receive a discount on their registration instead of receiving a complimentary item (e.g., event t-shirt)

10. Facebook Pixel integration

A Facebook pixel is an analytics tool that allows you to capture the behavior of your visitors. These behaviors can be used to generate a custom audience that can be used for marketing/advertising purposes.

When sending traffic to your event page, it’s important to be able to track what your visitors are doing. The Facebook pixel allows you to monitor the precise actions of visitors so you can determine if your ads are effective and if people are taking the actions you want them to take. Adding a Facebook pixel to your registration page will make advertising on Facebook much more effective. Not only will you know exactly who you’re advertising to, you will also have a better understanding of how your campaigns are performing!

For a refresher, check out our knowledge base article: how to add your Facebook Pixel to Race Roster pages

11. Bib look-up tool

As an event organizer, you want to eliminate as much stress as possible for both the participant as well as for yourself. Race Roster’s bib lookup tool is a great way to make it easy for the participant to find the pertinent information they need for race day. Learn how you can help streamline packet pick-up with the new, speedy, and accessible bib lookup tool.

12. Individual donations per registrant

Participants love to support causes they feel strongly about, and a convenient way to offer their support is by donating during event registration. We know that a large number of registrations contain more than one participant, which is why we added the ability for each registrant to make a separate donation during registration. Learn more about how to streamline the donation process by enabling the individual donations per registrant feature.

13. Sponsorship tool additions

We released the ability to highlight your sponsors by displaying them in a dedicated sponsors section on your event details page. With this addition, you can create more awareness for your sponsors and direct page visitors to their website by setting their name or logo as a link.

Another feature of the sponsorship management tool added this year allows you to sort your sponsors into groups and customize the order in which they will be displayed on your event details page.

14. Virtual race support

With virtual running on the rise, we highlighted ways we can help you engage with your participants beyond the traditional start and finish line. Using great technology, you can easily manage participant information, ship rewards such as shirts and medals, collect tracking, post results, and engage with your customers along their virtual journey. The more connected you are year round, the more likely participants will register for your next in-person race. Learn more about how Race Roster can help you provide a great virtual race experience.

15. Duplicate Registration Warning

As an active community, we are always on the go. It can be incredibly easy to lose track of something we did months ago – or even yesterday! Sometimes we just need a little friendly reminder, which is why we introduced a duplicate registration warning to participants who may be trying to register for your event for a second time. Learn more about the duplicate registration warning.

16. 25 Conferences attended

One thing we really love about the endurance event industry is the opportunity to travel to great conferences around the world. We love to support conferences that allow industry professionals to come together, network, learn, and get inspired! This year, we attended 25 conferences.

Next up on our list: The 2020 Running USA Industry Conference Presented by Race Roster

17. 58,706 support tickets closed

Your success is a huge priority here at Race Roster. Our customer support team is so dedicated to helping our customers, we closed 58,706 support tickets this year!

18. 12,345 miles covered as a team

We are event organizers and athletes supporting event organizers and athletes, which means we are quite active in the endurance space! Many of our staff members travel by foot or bike to and from work AND go for a run at lunch! Many participate in events, are on a sports team, or get involved in some form of fitness activity. This year, we had our team submit their miles travelled while exercising. With 34 submissions, we covered a whopping total of 12,345 miles!

19. Race Roster acquired by ASICS

In November 2019, we combined forces with ASICS to further support event organizers in growing their events. In ASICS, we have found a partner who is equally invested in solving these problems. We’re excited to continue expanding our product and the team behind it to better support our customers.