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Earth Day is an annual opportunity for people to come together worldwide and demonstrate their support for environmental protection.  We here at MotorsportReg racked our brains to find a link between motorsports and Earth Day.  We took a quick look down our customer list and BINGO! We found a great story right here in our own back yard, Thunderhill Raceway Park.

Thunderhill Raceway Park is a 2.86 miles race track located in Willows, California, and home of the San Francisco Region of the Sports Car Club of America [SCCA].  The track hosts everything from street cars and motorcycles, to all forms of racing, karting, and club events, plus film shoots and testing by professionals for R&D purposes.  Thunderhill Park is probably best known for hosting the annual National Auto Sport Association [NASA] 25 Hours of Thunderhill event.  And 2013 marks their 20^th anniversary!  They have many special events planned throughout the year to celebrate this momentous occasion.

But what really makes Thunderhill Park special, and a great facility to highlight on Earth Day, is their commitment to alternative energy.   Thunderhill Park is regarded as a leader in many areas of alternate energy applications not only from its own efforts but as a result of partnering with track users such as Tesla, Brammo and other developers of electric vehicles. “We are committed to the future,” noted Stuart Seitz resident generation “Y” executive, “and we are constantly on the lookout for ways to utilize Thunderhill Park for the advancement of technology and environmental causes.”

We all know how obsessive drivers can be.  They’re obsessive about their cars/karts, about their times, about their gear, about their in-car video and most importantly, about talking about their cars/karts, their times, their gear and their in-car video.  A lot of this chit-chat happens in forums.

There's still room to register for our upcoming webinar on mastering validation rules!  These rules help steer your attendees through your registration form and remove unnecessary work on the back end.

They are most commonly used for:

• Enforcing race compliance fees

• Requiring valid membership or preventing non-members from registering

• Enforce base and indexed/PAX classes for auto cross

• Verifying that a race transponder is on file

• Checking the vehicle make for marque-specific events

• Making sure guest names are filled out for additional tickets

• And more!

If you want to learn more, join our free webinar:

More Automation with Validation Rules
Friday, April 19th
10am PST/1pm EST
We'll teach you everything you need to know!

Q: Are refunds really free now?

A: Yes, refunds are indeed free! This means that you are not charged a credit card processing fee when refunding an attendee payment online.  However, the credit card processing fee assessed on the original transaction is not refunded.

When you process a refund, you are prompted to enter the amount, allowing you to decide exactly how much to refund. Depending upon your cancellation policy, you have the capability of deducting the original credit card processing fee from the refunded amount.

Q: I went to refund an attendee, but I don’t see the red refund button. I know it was there the other day. Why can’t I see it now?

A: In order to process a refund, you need to have money in your “kitty” to refund with.  If a pay period has just ended (on the 15^th and last day of the month), your money is no longer in your kitty as it’s in the process of being sent to you.

For example, if it’s May 1, the pay period just ended on 4/30 and your money is in transit. There won’t be any money in your kitty to refund with.  As soon as you receive enough in new registration fees to cover the refund, the red refund button will appear.

Ever get frustrated with your attendees because they don't read your registration form and ignore all your directions?  Good news, setting up validation rules can help steer them down the right path and save you time.  Bad news, we still haven't cracked the code on making your attendees read what's in front of them!

Validation rules are a powerful way of checking for registration conditions and taking action. A broad selection of rules let you enforce specific rules and policies with great precision.  They are most commonly used for:

• Enforcing race compliance fees

• Requiring valid membership or preventing non-members from registering

• Enforcing base and indexed/PAX classes for auto-cross

• Verifying that a race transponder is on file

• Checking the vehicle make for marque-specific events

• Making sure guest names are filled out for additional tickets

• And more!

 If you want to learn more, join our free webinar:

More Automation with Validation Rules
Friday, April 19th
10am PST/1pm EST

We'll teach you everything you need to know!

Our customers are always looking for creative ideas to promote their events and increase attendance.  Back in February we hosted a webinar called 7 Killer Tips on Filling Your Events and it was our best-attended webinar to date.  Some of the cheapest and most effective promotion tools out there are through social media.  Is this a good idea for your organization?

Let’s face it, attendees at the types of motorsport events our customers put on, in general, skew a little older.  We hear it all the time, “my attendees don’t use computers.”  Or “my attendees don’t look at Facebook.”  In fact the opposite is true.  According to a report released by the PewResearch Center, as of December 2012

67% of online adults use social networking sites!

That number is staggering!  And if you looker deeper into the numbers you’ll find that it’s not just young people cruising these sites.  Here are the stats for the number of internet users by age that are using social media networking sites:

• Ages 30 to 49- 77%
• Ages 50 to 64- 52%
• Ages 65+- 32%

So the next time you consider forgoing Facebook or Twitter to promote your event because your attendees aren't on these sites, think again!

It's that time of the year! The weather is getting a little warmer, the flowers are blooming, and drivers are dreaming about their upcoming season.  The vast majority of drivers have a set budget and set time limit dedicated to chasing that checkered flag each year.  And where do they look to determine which events they'll attend?  The MotorsportReg.com National Calendar.

Last year over 500,000 people viewed events on our website and at the writing of this post, nearly 1,800 events were listed on our calendar!  If your events aren't listed, you're missing out.  And it's best to list all of your events for the entire year.  NOW. Why? Because drivers are making their buying decisions today for the whole year. If they don't see your event, they're choosing an event from another organization.

Q: How do I set a limit on the number of items available?
A: You can set limits in two ways:

• Per event- ie: the total number of lunches available at the event is 100
• Per registration- ie: the total number of lunches each person can purchase is 2

To set a per event limit you change the purchase limit at the inventory level. To set a per registration limit you change the purchase limit at the package level.  Let’s look at a couple of examples.

Per Event Limit- Change Inventory Level

We want to limit the total number of lunches we’re selling at the event to 100.  We have already created a package called Lunch and linked the inventory item Lunch to that package.  In order to set the Lunch inventory limit to 100, we do the following:

1. Select the Lunch package from the parts bin.
2. Use the Edit tab in the right-hand part of the screen.
3. Change the quantity of the Lunch inventory item to 100 and click Save.

Q: What type of question should I use on the registration form to get the data I need to make decisions about my event?

A: To make your data collection more fool-proof and increase the likelihood of getting the information you are after, consider using an event question that has a fixed-answer list. This question format has a pick-list of pre-determined responses rather than allowing free-form text answers.

Here's an example: Let's say you are tying to gauge the level of experience a driver has so that you can assign them to the correct run group and determine whether or not they need an instructor. If you simply ask what their driving experience is, you'll get answers that are all over the map because the attendee isn't sure what you're looking for. Their answers might range from "I started driving when I was 12" to "I've done a lot of track days and I autocross regularly".

A more accurate way to capture the decision-making data you need is to set some parameters around the responses you are seeking. In the example above, you might set up a fixed-answer list that looks like this:

How many track days have you participated in during the last 18 months?

• 0-1 track days
• 2-5 track days
• 6-10 track days
• 11+ track days

These responses will give you quantifiable data in order to assign run groups and instructors. You can find instructions on setting up a question with a fixed-answer list in our help section

Last week we attended one of our favorite conventions of the year, the SCCA National Convention, in Las Vegas!  This was our 6th return visit and each year just keeps getting better and better.  As usual, our team manned the MotorsportReg.com booth alongside our friends Ryan Staub from Lockton Affinity HPDE Insurance and Bill Wade from Tire Rack Street Survival.

The reason we love this convention so much is because we LOVE meeting our customers and talking to them in person.  It’s the best opportunity to answer questions and get feedback that we use to make our service even better.  And let’s be honest, our customers are our biggest cheerleaders and hearing how we help them make their events easier and more fun to organize is music to our ears!  So thank you for your enthusiasm!

Founder Brian Ghidinelli gave two presentations this year, his normal MSR Training presentation (which we’re happy to say had more attendees than ever) and a live version of our popular webinar, 7 Killer Tips on Filling Your Events.  Both were very well received.

This year was special for another reason.  The SCCA inducted some very big names into their Hall of Fame including Bobby Rahal, Skip Barber and Carroll Shelby.  Check out the write up and some great pics here.

A big thanks to the SCCA for having us and being such a cooperative and valuable partner.  See 'ya next year!

All images thanks to Stacy King