Key information to communicate to your virtual event participants

Transitioning to a virtual event from an in-person event might be new territory for both you and your participants. As such, questions are bound to arise from participants as they are trying to understand this unfamiliar process and figure out what to expect. We believe it’s important to clearly communicate with your participants, and provide them with all the necessary information to ensure they have a positive virtual event experience from start to finish.

Here are a few things we recommend communicating to your virtual event participants:

 1. Instructions for participating in the event

Confirmation number for result submissions

Participants are required to confirm their registration in order to submit a result. They can do this by logging into their Race Roster account, or by entering in their last name and confirmation number.

We recommend sending participants their confirmation number using Race Roster’s email campaign tool right before result submission time. You can easily add in a merge tag to dynamically pull in each participant’s confirmation number and display it to the right person. This way, they will have a recent email to reference for a smooth result submission process.

We’ve put together step-by-step videos and written instructions you can share with your participants:

How to participate with the ASICS Runkeeper™ app

We’ve recently released our upgraded virtual event collaboration with the Runkeeper™ app and so far it has been very well received! Now that participants can easily get to the Runkeeper™ app from their participant dashboard and have their results posted automatically after completing their activity, the virtual event experience is more seamless than ever.

If your event is utilizing this great feature, we recommend providing your participants with clear instructions on how to participate using the Runkeeper™ app! We’ve put together knowledge base articles and a video you can share with them as part of your event communications plan.

When it comes time to participate, you can utilize our email campaign template to send participants directly to the correct page on the Runkeeper™ app in order to start their activity for your event.

2. Estimated shipping times & address confirmations

Participants are accustomed to an in-person packet-pickup process, so it’s best to keep everyone as informed as possible when it comes to estimated shipping times. Ask your shipping provider for an estimate to give your participants. If swag is selected or purchased during registration, you can add your estimated shipping time to your thank-you page message. You can also create your own “thank you for registering” email using Race Roster’s email campaign tool and include the estimated send and arrival dates on your event details page.

To ensure your products arrive at the right destination, you may want to consider confirming the shipping addresses of your participants. We recommend sending out an email one week prior to mailing, asking participants to confirm their shipping address and to update these details on their participant dashboard if this information is incorrect. You can easily display their current shipping information using merge tags and leverage participant editable data to allow participants to update their details.

Once products have been shipped, we recommend informing participants that their items are on their way and when they can expect their arrival. You can create an email or SMS (text-message) campaign to deliver this information to your participants.

Shipping can take longer than usual due to COVID-19, so be sure to get your estimate based on current circumstances. If your virtual event is open worldwide, you may want to ask for different estimates based on country.

3. Friendly reminders to increase engagement

Awards – If you are planning to offer virtual or physical awards, it might be beneficial to re-highlight which awards can be won and if there are prizes involved. By doing this, you can provide your participants with another point of engagement and motivate them to train harder for a chance to earn one of your awards!

Fundraising pages – Participants can get so excited about training for the event that they forget that they have their own personal fundraising page! You can send a friendly reminder to encourage your participants to set a fundraising goal, include a story, add a photo, and share their page with their friends and family! You could also create some digital badges to encourage fundraisers to reach specific milestones. When they reach a milestone (e.g., raise $100), they can share their badge on social media, resulting in additional exposure for your event and your cause.

Social media hashtags – Social media is a great tool to utilize for keeping participants engaged. It’s a good idea to decide on a hashtag for your event, and communicate this to participants so they know what to use when referencing your event on their social feeds. This will give you the opportunity to view and share photos on your social accounts to drive additional engagement leading up to your event.

Result submissions – It’s easy to get lost in the exciting aftermath of an event. Participants are celebrating their accomplishment of finishing the event, possibly posting their pre and post-run selfies, tuning in to your LIVE post-race party, and more! It might be a good idea to send a result submission reminder to those who did not have their results automatically submitted through the ASICS Runkeeper™ app — especially if your submission window is open for an extended period of time. A quick and friendly email campaign or SMS (text-message) campaign might be all they need to get their results submitted! You could also use this time to re-highlight all of the awesome awards they have the potential to receive (as long as they submit their times).

As always, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to resource us. You can email director@raceroster.com or reference the Race Roster knowledge base.