Easily Managing sold out RacEs for Ironman athletes

Case Study
Vineman, Inc.
Easily Managing
Sold Out Races
for Ironman
Athletes
Background
Vineman, Inc. manages two major events
each year. The first, Ironman 70.3, is the
go-to race for folks looking to qualify for the
Ironman World Championship 70.3 at Lake
Las Vegas. This race usually sells out in three hours, and in 2011 saw 2300 participants.
Along with age-group participants, the 70.3 is where you’ll find professional triathlon
competitors. These are top-caliber athletes, and Vineman’s 70.3 had one of the best
fields in the series last year.
Vineman’s second event (two weeks later) is actually four events: an Ironman distance
triathlon, called Full Vineman; an all-women’s Half Ironman distance triathlon, called
Barb’s Race; and two Aquabike events – a full and a ½ Vineman that consist of a swim
and bike portion only. About 2200 athletes compete on that day. These two weekends
keep Vineman, Inc. busy year round, according to Amy Latourette, the organization’s
registration coordinator, who was kind enough to spend some time with us recently to
discuss their work and how ACTIVE Network has helped.
Q&A with Amy Latourette of Vineman, Inc.
How many people does it take to organize all those events?
We have four full-time employees. I handle registration, work with the pros, manage
the website, organize onsite packet pickup, etc. Shelly Lydon handles volunteer
coordination and follow-up for the next year’s races, while Tracy Pugh focuses on
sponsorships, the expo, and more. We also have about 20 seasonal employees who
come in to help in the office, set up the transition areas, race course and finish line
area, clean equipment, etc. Our owner oversees it all.
How did Vineman get involved with Active Network?
Vineman was already using ACTIVE Network for registration when I came on board
in 2006. I’d been a volunteer before then and helped a lot with registration. It was
around this time that the races really began to grow. The volume of paperwork had
become a bit cumbersome - it simply wouldn’t have been manageable without online
registration. ACTIVE Network really was the first option. They offer an easy system
Case Study
Vineman, Inc.
and you get comfortable with it quickly. When ACTIVE Network updated to ACTIVE
Works, there was a relatively short learning curve, though there were some things in old
the platform I missed. The great thing about ACTIVE is that you can give them that kind
of feedback and they are really responsive to your needs. My experience with ACTIVE’s
team has been awesome. They’ve made changes based on my feedback to help me get
some things I wanted.
Do you incorporate fundraising with these events?
Our primary fundraising is with Barb’s Race. It all started when Barb Recchia was
diagnosed with cancer and to make a long story short, Barb’s Race was born out of
this and from this we would raise funds for local cancer related groups. We’re in our
12th year of Barb’s Race and we’ve raised over $500,000 to date. Barb chooses the
local organizations who will be the recipients of this money. By keeping it in the local
community we get to see the results of the money we (and the athletes) have raised. Half
of all entry fees for Barb’s Race go to the charity grants along with participant fundraising
and donations.
Have you seen an increase in online registration?
We have definitely seen online registration increase, especially for the 70.3 because
it sells out so fast—in three hours. There’s no option for offline with that kind of a time
crunch. But overall, more and more are signing up online compared to mail‑in entries. In
2006 there’d be stacks of envelopes on my desk with checks. Now I get maybe a quarter
of that.
refund. Finding participants and making changes has become easier. Because ACTIVE
Works lets me search information across multiple events, I can look up an athlete and find
them in the system—even if I don’t know what race they’re registered for—and make the
requested changes.
What reporting features do you use the most?
We use a lot of the reporting features. We pull merchandise reports, registration reports
(of course), reports to collect data for various emails that we may want to send to a
specific demographic. We use reports to get our competitor t-shirt numbers, to get
statistics for race day facts… the list goes on. ACTIVE Works makes it really easy.
How does Active Works help you communicate with participants?
The email tool in ACTIVE Works is a great improvement, because now you can create a
specific template with a header and picture or logo so it has a distinctive look. We’ve used
this design for a lot of the communications with our athletes.
What has your experience been like with customer support?
Over the years it’s been great. We’ve had a few different reps (having been with ACTIVE
for so long). Our current person is just incredible. Anytime I had a question about the
new platform, she would send a response with an actual screenshot of how to do what I
needed. At one point she was on vacation but she called in to make sure everything was
okay. Who does that? And the website team (ACTIVE Network hosts our website) gets
back to us very quickly for anything we need.
What are the top features you rely on in ActiveWorks?
Well, online registration is the most crucial. But we also love the volunteer module,
which has been really great. We previously used ACTIVEGiving as our fundraising
platform, which was a good fit for our charity program, and we’re working on how to use
ACTIVEWorks for promoting our charities going forward. All of these online tools allow for
better time management, which is key during our crunch time of June and July.
What else has Active Works made easier?
To add your name to our wait list, participants would mail in paper registration forms with
checks (the last year we did this was 2009 and we had 600 paper entries!) Now the
ACTIVE Works system lets potential participants register online for the wait list and when
their name clears the wait list we simply contact them via email and they register online.
This makes it less time consuming on both ends.
How has Active Works improved your registration process?
We get a lot of international participants in our races. Refunding their credit cards is simple
now as I can do it from my end—I used to have to call ACTIVE Network to process the
Case Study
Vineman, Inc.
How do you follow up and communicate with participants,
volunteers and donors to keep them coming back to your events?
We send a thank you after every race to our volunteers and athletes and provide
them with next year’s dates. We also send an email prior to registration opening. We
download everyone who has participated from the last three years so we reach as
many people as possible.
In what way does Active Works help you with these efforts?
Just having the ability to email via the database is such a time saver and makes it
so easy. If people have done the race multiple years it deletes the duplicate email
addresses. I can pull whatever information we need and can reach thousands of
people in about five minutes.
Have you noticed an increase in social sharing about your event?
It’s really cool that when people sign up for a race and click the ‘Like’ button, it tells
their friends they’ve signed up. It’s a great way to get the word out. Going forward we’d
like to increase our social media visibility. We’re starting a new event—a mud run—and
we’d like to experiment with this.
Would you recommend Active to others?
Definitely!
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Participation
MANAGE Events
Efficiently
BUILD Lasting
Relationships
The Vineman Ironman® 70.3
sold out in three hours in
2011 with 2300 participants,
as well several other Vineman events – all hosted on
the ACTIVE Works software
platform.
From an improved email
tool, to quick refunds and an
automated wait-list management process, to detailed
reporting features and easy
participant data look-up,
ACTIVE Works makes it really easy.
When people sign up for
a race and click the ‘Like’
button, it tells their friends
they’ve signed up. It’s a
great way to get the word
out. Plus, Vineman can send
a thank you email through
ACTIVE Works to volunteers
and athletes after every race
and provide them with next
year’s dates. They can also
notify everyone who has
participated over the last
three years that registration
is opening.