You’ve taken the first step of many and decided to create your event with Athlinks Services. Now all that’s left to do is get people to register for your event. Easy enough, right? Well, maybe not, but by partnering with Athlinks Services you now have access to exclusive resources, guides and tips on how to boost those numbers and promote an incredible event. Below you will find what we believe are essential components of a strong registration push campaign.
Create an Event Landing Page
Increase event exposure with the Athlinks Event Landing Page, the virtual “Front Door” for your entire Athlete experience. Create a dedicated, customizable and shareable Event Landing Page to house all relevant event information in one place, with the ability to push registration.
A fully completed Event Landing Page includes:
- Race Description
- Registration Portal
- Schedule of Events
- Course Maps
- Advertising inventory for Event Sponsors
Bonus: Talk with your Account Representative about becoming a Featured Event in the Athlinks Mobile App.
Optimizing Registration Flow
A critical component to filling your race is offering smooth and easy registration. In our free guide, How to Optimize the Registration Path, we dig into the details that can make a major difference in your registration process, including:
- Features: What to look for in a registration platform
- Questions: What to ask, when to ask it, & how questions can impact drop-off rates
- Add-Ons: Should you include merchandise & donations in the reg path?
- Special Categories: Managing team entries, fundraising, & event series
- Pricing: Creating an effective pricing strategy & the value of referrals
- Sponsors: Integrating your partners from the get-go
- Human Behavior: What the data tells us
- Now What: How Athlinks Services can help
Armed with this advice, along with Athlinks Services’ robust registration solutions, you’ll be ready. You can put in place a streamlined system to increase efficiency, reduce errors, and avoid the dreaded risk of drop-offs. Our goal is to work with you to help optimize your event registration and drive increasing numbers of participants to your race.
Set Pricing Strategies
Developing a race pricing strategy that strikes the perfect balance between profitability and affordability is easier said than done. However, we know that it is not impossible to find that sweet spot and at Athlinks we are here to provide you with these six pricing strategies to help boost your reg numbers:
- Setting Price Breaks: It is critically important to encourage early registration by creating multiple price breaks. Price breaks not only drive revenue and early registration, they also offer you a great opportunity to email your past participant database with a valuable piece of information (the price is going up!) and keep your event fresh in their minds.
- Incentivized Referrals: Offer your registrants a future discount or special swag if they refer a certain number
of friends or family. You can track referrals using individual coupon codes that registrants can share via email andtheirsocial media channels, making it an even more powerful promotion. ChronoTrack Live, our online registration tool, offers a simple way to do this through our Referral Feature. Create unique, shareable URL’s, customizable share graphics, and track the top influencers in your market. - Push Promotions and Discount Codes: From the time registration opens up until race day, run a few promotions to stir up interest in your event. Think of these as more one-off pricing strategies. Pro Tip: Be sure to push them on your social media channels like Facebook and Twitter!
- Registration Blitz: Want a great way to kick-start registration? The day (or even Monday if that is easier) after your event, open up registration for the next year’s race at a deep discount.
- VIP Pricing: A final pricing strategy that can also help you increase your numbers is to offer VIP registration. This exclusive offer is available to participants at a higher price point and gives the Athlete and added experience at the event. Things such as VIP Only Swag, an Athlete recovery tent, unlimited food/drink, etc.
- Virtual Registrations and Donation: For the Athlete who just couldn’t make it to the day of the event, we recommend having an option for Virtual Registration. The registrant will register online but will not attend day of the event. Looking for a great way to make these participants feel a part of the big day? Send them an event T-shirt or event memorabilia.
More detail on these pricing strategies can be found in our blog post Which Rules About Race Pricing Strategies Are You Breaking?
Maximize Exposure and Reach via Social Media
Your event takes all your love and energy to make it a success year after year. Between organizing volunteers, registration, timing, t-shirts, and medals, you may wonder when you’ll ever find time to navigate the world of social media. You are not alone. We’ve watched the experts, talked to Race Directors and brought in social media expert, Big Run Media to put together this handy Race Directors Guide to Social Media to get social media working for you.
Here are just a few of the key pieces of the social media-success puzzle you’ll be able to navigate by using our guide:
- Determine which network(s) to focus time and energy on
- Find your audience and fans, and grow your race
- Build a platform to communicate special offers for participants
- Promote your races year round
- Gain more exposure for your races
- Measure participants’ satisfaction and gain valuable insights
Think you’ve got these steps covered? Check out our white paper Race Directors Guide to Advanced Social Media and take your social posts to the next level.
Be on the lookout for the following marketing materials and opportunities coming soon from Athlinks Services:
- Upcoming White Paper: How to Market your Event – We are working on an all-inclusive guide to teach you the basic tactics and tools you’ll need to successfully market your race including Race Promotion Basics, 10 Free Ways to Promote Your Race, Marketing to Women, and more!
- Marketing Toolkit: We are in the process of adding a feature to our Athlinks Services Resources page where you will be able to gain access to downloadable Athlinks marketing assets, from logos, to Results buttons, athlete-friendly images and streamlined content. Consider this toolkit your one-stop digital shop to promote Athlinks to your Athletes.
- Marketing Timeline: Now that you know best practices, allow us to help you with WHAT to post and WHEN to post it in the weeks leading up to your event and immediately after.
These ideas are just the foundation for what you as Race Directors and Timers can be doing to ensure you do more than just break even this year.
Now go get those Athletes! They’re out there and they’re already looking for their next start line.
