Sell More Marathon & Half Marathon Registrations

1. Managing permits, multiple distances, start lines, and staying organized.
2. Mapping an interesting course.
3. Selling registrations in a competitive market.
4. Finding and retaining sponsors.
5. Identifying where to improve or focus.

With the right tools, you can sell more registrations faster and enhance your overall operations.

The Idaho Falls Marathon & Half Grows 61% in Just Two Years.

Between 2023 and 2025, the Idaho Falls Marathon and Half experienced 61 percent growth.

1. Stay Organized, Improve Teamwork, & Find Volunteers.

When you’re a marathon director, you’ve got a lot to do. Race Entry offers you the tools you need to stay organized and get the help you need during race week.

Work more seamlessly with your team and stop tasks from falling through the cracks:

• Checklist Project Manager – Create to-do lists for your team, add tasks, set deadlines, and track progress through one integrated system. You’ll stay on top of your permits easily with this tool.
• Multi-user Access & Permissions – Give your team access to all the tools they need to do their job while protecting sensitive information.

The success of your marathon and half marathon on race day depends on your volunteers. Race Entry’s integration with Come Volunteer makes it easy to streamline volunteer recruitment and communication:

• Online Volunteer Signup Forms – Make it easy for your volunteers to sign up for jobs and shifts online so you have your volunteer needs met.
• Volunteer Communication – Quickly email volunteers important details about trainings and what time they need to arrive for their volunteer role.
• Volunteer Check-in – Check in volunteers quickly from your dashboard or with our integrated POS app.
• Autogenerated Volunteer Promo Codes – Send volunteers an autogenerated, unique promo code for your race when they sign up to volunteer. No more time lost to volunteer promo code creation.

With Race Entry’s tools, you and your team can improve efficiency and meet deadlines. You can also streamline your volunteer rewards program so you can spend more time on what makes a difference for your race.

2. Highlight Key Features of Your Marathon & Half Marathon Course.

Many runners choose their marathon or half marathon based on the course. You need a map that shows off important features of your course:

• Elevation
• Scenic Spots
• Aid Stations
• Portapotties
• Start Line
• Finish Line
• Parking

Race Entry offers free marathon and half marathon map creation. Customize your maps to show off your course with elevation, scenic spots, and more. Once created, you can embed these maps on your website, too.

3. Grow Your Marathon & Half Marathon.

As a marathon and half marathon director, these are the realities of your market:

• 2 percent of the population runs.
• 4-6 months for experienced runners to train.
• 6-12 months for new runners to train.
• 2 weeks recovery.

You’re putting together a great experience for your runners – and you're competing against other marathons and half marathons for the same two percent of the population that runs. And you’ve got to convince new runners to dedicate time to training.

You need marketing tools that give you an edge. Race Entry’s proven growth tools do just that:

• Custom Referral Program – Set a refund rate for each new participant your runners help sign up. Let your runners earn up to a full refund on their registration fee. Once created, everything is automatically tracked and your runners can manage getting their refund. You don’t have to do any extra work.
• Social Share & Save – Offer a small discount to everyone who shares your marathon signup page with their Facebook friends. You’ll raise awareness and get more runners cheaper than running Facebook ads.
• Abandoned Registration Email – Remind people to finish their registration with automated abandoned cart emails. You can customize the messaging and automatically send multiple email reminders for orders that are still left incomplete after the first email. The personalized link in their email will take them directly to where they left off, so they don’t have to re-enter all of their information.
• Group Discounts – Encourage people to sign up in groups by offering a group discount. The discount will apply automatically to all orders that qualify, so you don’t have to do additional marketing or get people to remember a promo code.
• Loyalty Program – Help your runners make your race a tradition by offering a loyalty discount to everyone who meets your loyalty program criteria. It’s cheaper and easier to keep your runners coming back than it is to find new ones.

The tools above help you sell more registrations faster with word-of-mouth marketing.

You’ll also get an SEO boost with a calendar listing and a customizable marketing page with details about your marathon and half marathon, photos, and video. This SEO boost makes it easier for people to find your race in Google searches and AI chat searches.

Plus, you’ll benefit from a form optimized for quick conversion:

• No Account Creation Required – Your runners won’t be annoyed with account creation or password retrieval delaying their signup completion. They can seamlessly sign up without any gatekeeping.
• Simple, Two-page Form – Your runners can complete their form on the first page, then pay. It’s a simple two-page process.

With a quick and simple signup, you’ll be able to get more runners to your marathon or half marathon.

4. Find & Retain More Marathon and Half Marathon Sponsors.

Sponsors elevate your marathon and half marathon experience for your runners. They also help ensure that you cover your costs, and keep your team well-paid.

Bring more organization to your team and make it easy to tell who your top deal-closers are with built-in tools:

• Sponsor CRM – Set goals, track outreach, note conversation details, and more in your built-in CRM. With a CRM designed for marathons, you’ll be able to close more sponsor deals.
• Online Sponsor Sales – List your sponsorship opportunities and sell sponsorships online. Sponsors can just buy a sponsorship online or request an invoice. You don’t need to spend time selling a sponsor who’s already sold.
• Invoicing – Quickly create and email invoices from Race Entry’s system. Online credit card payments are auto-tracked, and you can mark sponsorships as paid when you get checks or in-kind offers.
• Autorenewals – Set-up automated sponsor renewal email invitations so you can start the sponsorship conversations shortly after this year’s marathon. You can also select which sponsors receive these emailed invitations, so you can do more personal outreach to your top tier sponsors.
• Sponsorship Calendar Listing – Automatically enjoy a listing on Race Entry’s sponsorship calendar so businesses looking for sponsorship opportunities can easily find your marathon.

With these tools supporting your sponsor efforts, it’s easy to keep more sponsors and sell new ones.

You can also enhance and streamline your sponsor benefits with Race Entry’s tools:

• Sponsor Promotions – Make it easy for sponsors to advertise their special offers to your marathon runners. You can even track view data on each sponsor’s offer.
• Autogenerated Promo Codes – Save time on delivering discounted or free entries to your sponsors. Our system automatically creates unique promo codes for sponsors when they pay for an eligible sponsorship category.
• Logo Autodisplays – Include your sponsor logos automatically on your marketing page and in your email footers to ensure you’re giving them as much visibility as possible.

Managing your sponsor program has never been easier.

5. Find Valuable Insights to Improve Your Marathon and Half Marathon Race.

You need to understand what’s driving your marathon’s success and where you need to make improvements.

• Forecasting – Automatically track all of your revenue and add your expenses to get a clear financial picture of your marathon. With this information, you can know where to put your focus to ensure your marathon’s profitability.
• Pre-built Reports – Quickly see important data in pre-built reports and graphs, including a sales heatmap, participant retention, year-over-year sales comparison, and more.
• Custom Reports – Build any additional report you need quickly and easily with our custom graphs tool.
• Order Stats – See median order value, time spent to complete orders, and order size to get a better sense of how people are signing up for your marathon.

With robust reporting capabilities, you’ll have the insights you need to improve your marathon each year.

Marathon & Half Marathon Director FAQ

What’s the best way to advertise my marathon and half marathon?

Beyond using Race Entry’s proven growth tools, you can strategically place posters and signs in your area, partner with local run clubs or create your own, and grow your social media presence with regular posts. Get more tips on how to grow your marathon.

How do I create a marathon and half marathon registration form?

To create your marathon registration form on Race Entry, start by creating your race director account. Then, add your race and customize your form. You can be open for registrations in minutes. You can add multiple categories to a single registration form.

If you’re still waiting to finalize your pricing, you can feature a countdown clock with an email signup for notification when you open registration.

How customizable is Race Entry to my marathon and half marathon?

Race Entry is very customizable to meet your needs. You can create marathon relay teams, do solo marathon registrations, or do both. Plus, you can customize your form with questions and to match your marathon’s branding.

Does Race Entry have timer integrations?

Yes, Race Entry is integrated with many timing softwares including RaceDay Scoring, ChronoTrack, RunScore, and more.

Does Race Entry offer live results?

Yes, Race Entry offers live race results. Timers can quickly post times online as soon as they have them.

Your runners can see their results from a personalized page complete with a finisher certificate and photos.

How does Race Entry manage runner photos for marathons and half marathons?

Easily upload photos from your marathon to Race Entry. Then, our system uses AI to match bib numbers and faces. Once matched, photos appear on personalized results pages for each of your runners.

You can sell high resolution downloads and printed photos through a third party. You don’t have to do extra work and you can add a small fee to these transactions to generate additional revenue from your marathon and half marathon.

What tools do you offer directors to help with athlete support?

Customize settings to enable self-edits, deferrals, category changes, and transfers with deadlines. You can even add fees for changes with runner-managed registration edits.

Can I use Race Entry to sell marathon and half marathon swag and merchandise?

Yes, you can use Race Entry to sell your marathon swag and merchandise. You can sell merchandise from an online store, feature items during registration, and sell using an integrated POS app.

If a third party manages your swag and merchandise, you can even add a separate payee for merchandise sales.

Can I use Race Entry to fundraise for partner charities and nonprofits?

Yes, Race Entry offers built-in fundraising tools to help your charities get the most out of your fundraising partnership.

Accept online donations, include donation requests during registration, make it easy for participants to create their own mini-fundraisers and fundraising teams, require fundraising teams with registration, and create a “Run for Free” program with fundraising requirements to make your race more accessible and support your partner charities.

Can I transfer years of past registration data to Race Entry?

Yes, it’s easy to transfer past years of your registration data to Race Entry. Download all of your data from your current service provider, then we’re happy to help you get all of your data uploaded.

Does Race Entry charge setup or monthly fees for its software?

Race Entry does not charge setup or monthly fees to marathon directors for its software. Instead, we charge a service fee on credit card transactions. Most marathons pass the fee to their runners.

Do I have to sign a contract to use Race Entry?

Race Entry does not require marathon directors to sign a contract. We’re focused on delivering you a quality experience and effective tools every day.