When it comes to marketing your race, email marketing is the granddaddy of all marketing channels. Forget TikTok, and Instagram and Facebook Ads, if you don’t have a sound email marketing strategy, you could be passing on a huge opportunity to grow your race - and also falling short of delivering the highest quality experience you can for your participants.

Today we are going to be taking a very close look at all aspects of email marketing strategy, from the types of emails you should be sending, and when and how often you should send them, to exactly what you should be saying to your participants and prospective participants through your email copy. And we’ll be doing all that with the help of my guest, marketing pro, and very passionate email marketing advocate, Hollie Light - or “Hollie from the emails”, as she’s come to be known.

In this episode:

• Why email marketing is so important for marketing your race
• Are you emailing your audience too often? 
• Segmenting your audience into converted (signed-up participants) and unconverted (everyone else) subscribers
• Newsletters: whom to send them to, what to put in them, how often you should send them
• Sticking to a regular emailing schedule: creating a content calendar, repurposing content 
• The importance of rewarding your email subscribers
• Selling your race through your newsletter
• Tips for engaging email subject lines (hint: it's not about you, it's about them!)
• Nurturing subscribers to signing up through staged email sequences
• Using email as a customer service/upselling channel for existing participants
• Marketing your shorter races as training events for your longer races
• Growing your mailing list with freebie/giveaway funnels
• Email design for optimal open rates and reader friendliness
• Using testimonials and social proof in your emails
• Productivity tools, email templates and other tips to help you optimize your email marketing

Many thanks to our podcast sponsors, RunSignup and Racecheck, for supporting our efforts to provide great, free content to the race director community:

RunSignup are the leading all-in-one technology solution for endurance and fundraising events. More than 26,000 in-person, virtual, and hybrid events use RunSignup's free and integrated solution to save time, grow their events, and raise more. Find out more at https://runsignup.com/.

Racecheck can help you collect and showcase your participant reviews on your race website, helping you more easily convert website visitors into paying participants, with the help of their Racecheck Review Box. Download yours for free today at https://organisers.racecheck.com/.

You can find more resources on anything and everything related to race directing on our website RaceDirectorsHQ.com.

You can also share your questions about email marketing or anything else in our Facebook group, Race Directors Hub.