SEND EMAILS
Our Email Marketing system is integrated directly into RunSignup to allow Race Directors to reach registered runners, contact participants from previous years, and upload and email any email list of past or potential runners. RunSignup gives races the ability to send customized, personal emails to their participants immediately, or at a scheduled time right from their Race Dashboard. These features can be found on your Race Dashboard by going to Email Marketing > Send Emails.
Setting up Your Account
If you have not sent emails using RunSignup before you will need to go through a short process to setup an account with our email service provider - SendGrid. To do this, go to Email Marketing > Manage Email Settings from your Race Dashboard, or click any of the other items under Email Marketing.
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NOTE: If you already have a SendGrid account made through your Race you can skip ahead to the Select Email Recipients section further down the page.
You will still be able to customize the way the “email sender” and “reply-to” addresses are seen when sending an email. This will be explained in the how-to section for Managing Your Email Settings.
Once you agree to RunSignup's terms and conditions, click on Enable and you will receive confirmation that “Your SendGrid account has been successfully set up".
Select Email Recipients
Common Lists
You will have the option to select common recipient lists. These include the ability to send to all participants, send to participants in specific events, send to previous participants of your race, and volunteers. You can Add lists as recipients, you can Exclude lists from being recipients, or you can choose to do neither.
If you would like to only add or exclude volunteers for specific volunteer tasks, then you can click on Show Volunteer Tasks, and these tasks will be opened up for you.
New common recipient lists will continue to be added, allowing Race Directors to easily contact specific participants.
The really cool thing to note about these lists, is that unlike using an external email marketing system, the lists are dynamic. This means that if you schedule an email to go to all participants a week in advance, all registrants who sign up between when the email is created and when it is sent will still receive the email, so you don’t have to update the lists.
Custom Lists
Below the Common Lists you can find the race’s Custom Lists. These custom lists allow for Race Directors to upload their own list of recipients, or to create a custom list they use frequently so they don’t always have to re-select the common recipients options.
You can learn more about this in our guide on Creating & Managing Email Lists.
Clearing List Selections
If you included or excluded any lists that you no longer want to include or exclude, you can remove your selection by clicking on the X found in line with that list.
Additional Recipients
You can add a single recipient, or a list of additional recipients by typing them into this field. In order to add multiples you must insert a comma in between each email.
Email Settings
Name this Email
This field is for internal use only. You should name this something that you as the Race Director can recognize. This will not be shown to the recipients of the email at any time.
Email Subject
This field is where you can add the Subject of the email which participants will see.
Email Attachment
You can add an Attachment to your email by clicking the Browse button and uploading an image, PDF file, or Text file.
NOTE: This cannot be more than 5MB, and the name of the file cannot contain a single quote or an apostrophe.
When to Send
You can choose to either send the email immediately by selecting Send Email Now, or to schedule the email by selecting Send Email Later.
If you select Send Email Later, then additional fields will appear, which can be used to set the Email Send Date and the Email Send Time.
Write Your Email
In this section, you will be able to use the Select Template dropdown to choose from the templates you have created in the Manage Email Templates section.
IMPORTANT: If you switch the template, any unsaved customizations will be lost.
You also have the option to use the Select Theme dropdown menu, to pick from the color schemes that are set up for your race in the Race > Race Page > Race Theme section.
Next you will be able to use the various features provided in the text box to create and format your custom email. If you would like to embed HTML or CSS into your email, use the brackets icon to change the view of the editor to the source code to edit it manually.
Replacement Tags
Take full advantage of the power of an integrated email system with tags for all your participants: not only can you tag all the standards like Name and Email, but also Bib Number, Individual Results links, Corral Name and Start Time, and even a barcode for speedy check-in. See our full guide on how to use these in our guide on How To Use Replacement Tags
Save as Draft
If you’ve started creating an email and are not ready to send it yet you can use the Save as Draft feature to save it for future use.
When you save an email as a Draft it will show under the Email Marketing > Manage Emails > Draft Emails part of your Race Dashboard. From there you can edit and send your Draft Email as described in How-To Manage Emails
Send Test Email
You can send a test email to a single recipient before sending it out to your lists to double check your formatting and settings.
IMPORTANT: Be aware that test emails will NOT include attachments or use replacement tags.
Send Email
When you are happy with your email you just need to use the Review Email button to arrive at the Send Email page.
You will be given a confirmation page where you can review your email and be given the option to send it now, edit the email, or cancel it. You will also be given some statistics about the email that you are about to send.
Confirm that everything looks correct to you by clicking the Send Email button, or click Edit Email to be brought back into the email editor where you can update the lists used, the content of the email, or when it is being sent.
Now that you’ve sent your email you can view statistics for it as explained in How To Use Email Reports.