MotorsportReg.com Blog (35)

See you in San Antonio!

June 11, 2013 by Brian Ghidinelli

Just a quick reminder that we'll be at the SCCA National Convention in San Antonio, Texas this week Wednesday through Sunday. Mark and I will be manning a MotorsportReg.com booth in the exhibit hall so please stop by and say hi. We've already talked with many SCCA organizers who will be stopping by and we would love to give you a quick demo of how MotorsportReg.com provides maximum value for your region.

We're also excited because two of our customers, San Francisco Region SCCA and Oregon Region SCCA will be presenting an hour-long talk on how the two regions worked together on their website redesigns and online registration using MotorsportReg.com. Don't miss this - it will be a great session on how regions can leverage each other.

See you there!

September 25, 2014 by Brian Ghidinelli

People ask us all the time if we accept Paypal. We don't. Of course the next question is, "why not?" This article from the Wall Street Journal contains the reason:

You'll Get Weaker Protections. Security is frequently touted as one of the upsides to alternate-payment programs. After all, there is no credit-card number to steal. "But that means you won't have the same protections as if you were paying with a credit card," said Consumer Federation's Ms. Grant. "[Fraud] coverage is extremely limited, and whatever protections the service does give you are voluntary."

I'm not singling out Paypal here; it's simply the most popular example of an unregulated financial institution. They are not bound by the same laws as banks and consumers do not enjoy the protection of FDIC insurance or credit card liability limitations. While the risk is low, it would be a critical condition if you're an event organizer with $10,000 of invoices and a frozen Paypal account.

Here at MotorsportReg.com, we'll continue to accept good old fashioned, guaranteed payment so organizers don't have to worry about their bank account going dry. We pay out every two weeks via direct deposit whether you're due $1 or $100,000. Like clockwork!

Update Jan 24th: Paypal freezes Ron Paul donations. Yikes!

Update 2014: To be clear, we're mostly talking about protections for event organizers who would RECEIVE money. Paypal is certainly secure in the sense of protecting attendee cardholder data. However, you have less control on the merchant side. Here are two examples from the past year that demonstrate this is an ongoing challenge that could be devastating to an event organizer who needs to pay their bills:

Paypal Freezes $45,000 of Mailpile's Crowdfunded dollars (2013)

Paypal Freezes $35,000 donation to fund treatment for a cancer patient (2013)

Topics: FAQ

Growth And Changes

June 11, 2013 by Mark

Given that I've been a part of Pukka Software for well over a year now, it's probably time to introduce myself to those of you that I've not spoken with yet. My name is Mark Dadgar and I'm a motorsports junkie. As a long time user of MotorsportReg.com and an even longer-time eventmaster, I joined Brian to help bring these fantastic tools to the widest array of clubs and organizations possible. I'm primarily responsible for customer support, sales, and marketing, but given the can-do attitude here at Pukka Software, I'm happy to pitch in wherever my skills are needed.

Since we're talking about recent additions to the MotorsportReg.com family, we'd like to welcome some new organizations to the fold. Audi Club North America has come onboard with their National-office sponsored Steamboat Winter Driving school plus ACNA Florida brings their driving events program as well. Two large and well-respected Porsche Club of America regions, North Country and Northern New Jersey, bring their active and enthusiastic members to the MotorsportReg.com community and they are joined by SCCA Las Vegas, too. Up in the Pacific Northwest, BMW CCA Puget Sound chapter and the Northwest Alfa Romeo Club have adopted our tools to streamline their programs. Independent organizations Touring Car Racing Association and ProAutoSports also recognized the benefits we provide and signed on with us early in 2008, joined by Northeast SHO Club over on the Right Coast as well.

To all our new clients, thank you for the trust you put in us and Welcome Aboard! It's going to be a great year!

June 11, 2013 by Brian Ghidinelli

While everyone is focusing on fun and family this holiday season, we've been hard at work bringing PCI DSS compliance to MotorsportReg.com. This weekend we're finally ready to install 12 new servers for the next generation of MotorsportReg.com. Here is the schedule:

Thursday Day - Visual inspection

Friday Day - Cabinet setup, new hardware move-in, power-on

Saturday Day - Final configuration and testing

Saturday Night - Migrate data to new hardware

Sunday Day - Update existing hardware, rotate back into cluster

Saturday evening is the window for possible service outage. We will be migrating key services like Web, Mail and Database starting around 11PM. We are allocating up to four hours for the migration but expect it to take less than 60 minutes. From 11PM-3AM MotorsportReg.com may be unavailable or unreliable. This site will also be subject to the same window.

We'll write a follow-up here when all is said and done and we've had some rest. And cleaned the office. :)

See you on the flip side...

June 11, 2013 by Brian Ghidinelli

Part of our customer service infrastructure is a tool called Mailroom. It uses the same technology as spam filters (Bayesian algorithms) to suggest responses to common customer questions letting us answer emails quickly with the ability to customize each response for clarity.

Some months ago, I answered a few questions about MSR and our use of Mailroom and the guys over at SproutIt just published a customer case study featuring MotorsportReg.com. Check it out!

We are working with SproutIt to integrate Mailroom with MotorsportReg.com for 2008 to help our customers automate their email and save them more time when under the gun.

June 11, 2013 by Brian Ghidinelli

Screenshot - pukkasoft.com design version 2

We outgrew our previous design

Today we have three big announcements. The first is a major update to the

June 11, 2013 by Brian Ghidinelli

Last night at 8:04pm Pacific time, a 5.6 magnitude earthquake occurred approximately 5 miles from our data center in Santa Clara where MotorsportReg.com runs.

No damage occurred to the building and our systems remained online with no interruption to service. Everything performed as it is designed without problems.

This is why MSR is not the cheapest option out there: we prioritize reliability and support over unsustainable rock-bottom pricing. Many thanks to our customers who understand this choice and have chosen to work with the best.

September 9, 2013 by Brian Ghidinelli

Picked this up today via MailChimp: Two researchers worked with an online grocer and found that a surprise gift certificate or coupon (an "unanticipated small windfall") caused people to buy stuff they wouldn't buy otherwise. The kicker? They wind up spending more than normal.

MotorsportReg.com's Discount Code system is the perfect way to take advantage of this behavior.

Our discount code system allows you to create arbitrary codes (like "FALL07" or "RACERSPCL") with either an absolute dollar amount or a percentage-based discount. You can narrow down the use to a single event and control how many times someone can redeem the code and how many are available along with some minimum and maximum dollar controls. You can find it under "Club Profile" from your Dashboard.

Combined with our email blaster, you can create marketing pressure and incentivize people to sign up through one of these small windfalls. You might consider upselling your attendees on "extras" like t-shirts or dinners. Experiment with your holiday parties or driving events and let us know what happens!

You can read the full research paper here.

Topics: Features

Failure Expected

June 11, 2013 by Brian Ghidinelli

I caught this in a presentation from one of our competitors:

"No commitments, no contracts to sign; If I get hit by a bus, you just go to my competition."

Wow.

In what world is it OK to tell your paying customers that you're not protecting their interests with every resource possible? That you'll leave them high and dry when disaster inevitably strikes?

And no contract?? What you mean is no written guarantee that your data won't be sold or misused. How convenient!

You always get what you pay for. Not everyone has the bucks for a Ferrari but who wants to be driving a Pinto when it bursts into flames? The good news is you can borrow our Ferrari today for free.

And yes, if you're wondering, those are computer guts plugged in and sitting on a shelf. Mark and I spied them in another cage while visiting our colo last week. Scary!

June 11, 2013 by Brian Ghidinelli

You often hear parents relate the joy they feel when they witness their children succeed. For product managers and software developers, the equivalent is seeing your users do great things with the tools you build. Things beyond what you imagined yourself. I want to highlight such a case by one of our customers, Triangle Z Club / Tarheel Sports Car Club of North Carolina.After my last post on sending formatted HTML email, program manager Stacy King dove into the free Campaign Monitor email templates and built one for TZC/THSCC.

Without knowing hardly any HTML, Stacy used the email blaster with a little trial and error to replace the dummy copy of the template with his content. You can see in this big image how it turned out. In my opinion, this is one of the best emails anyone has ever sent using MotorsportReg.com and I'm excited to see what our organizers come up with next!

Organize awesome events.Our all-in-one event management software keeps organizers sane & attendees happy.

See you in San Antonio!

Pass on Paypal

Growth And Changes

New Servers This Weekend

SproutIt Highlights MotorsportReg.com

Triple Launch: New Site, blog and pricing!

Earthquake Report

Unexpected Coupons = Sales

Failure Expected

More on Formatted Email

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