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I instructed recently for a new program organized by the Golden Gate Chapter of the BMW CCA.  For those keeping notes, GGC was the club for whom I built the original prototype of MSR back in 2002.

GGC has a successful ladder system that moves participants from low-cost, low-commitment entry-level activities like car control clinics to higher-cost and higher-commitment events like autocross and HPDEs.  The challenge they have faced is keeping advanced drivers in their program. Some go on to club racing, some become instructors, but others simply get lost in the vast wilderness that is "open track days".

If you're brainstorming solutions to this problem, you might throw out ideas like more track time, better instructors, or more liberal passing, to help retain those experienced students. Those might work but lots of groups do that.  GGC tried something totally different.  They purchased 7 GPS-based data acquisition units and invited 7 instructors with racing and data acquisition experience (who could translate the squiggly lines into meaningful instruction) to create a personalized "Advanced+" offering.  An increased entry fee bought the use of the data system, one-on-one coaching and double the track time to apply and learn from the intensive instruction.

A good old fashioned approach to influencing behavior- buy it!

I’m pretty sure any one of us could fill our events in a heartbeat if we gave away stacks of cash. But if you had stacks of cash, you probably wouldn't be reading a blog about how to bribe people into coming to your events.

So we need to be more creative. What you give away needs to be interesting or valuable to the recipient, not necessarily of high value to you. Let me give you an example of a promotion a club racing organization ran to attract both new people and inactive members to come out to their events. 

Even though I've mentioned this in several blogs, (and it seems like common sense to me), you would be SHOCKED by how many people don't include the link to registration when promoting their events!

Seriously! 

I see it in social media posts, emails, forums, you name it.  And every time, I just shake my head and think- "but you haven't provided the most CRITICAL piece of information!!!"

Well now I know I'm not the crazy one.

Here at MotorsportReg we pride ourselves on having one of the best customer service and support experiences in the business.  Not only do we support our end-customers, the event organizers, but we also support their end customer, participants.  In fact many participants who email or call us, don't realize that  we're not the ones putting on the events.  That's why we promote that using MSR is like adding another member to your team!  Last week alone we received nearly 1,200 emails and 180 phone calls.

We thought it might be educational (and interesting) to share some of the gripes we get from attendees about registration forms.  Below are a few of the most common ones (in no particular order).

If you read our last blog, hopefully you understand how powerful slicing and dicing your email list is when promoting your events. Here's a quick recap:

1. Sending the right message to the right people at the right time makes your message more relevant.
2. People are more likely to open and read emails targeted directly to them, improving your results.
3. When you consistently send relevant emails, your email reputation improves and your emails will less likely be ignored.

To really push home the point, we're giving you some promotion email examples based on segmenting your email list using our built-in Email Blaster.

One of the cheapest and easiest ways to promote your events is through email.  In fact, we like it so much we wrote a blog with the 10 email promotion tips that every event organizer should know.  And with the frequent changes that Facebook makes to their News Feed, email is one of the best ways to make sure your message is getting to your attendees.

Number eight on the top 10 email tips is all about segmenting your email list.  Very simply, it's about sending the right message to the right person- RELEVANCY!  This is a very powerful tool that can make a huge difference to your promotion efforts and it doesn't take that much more effort.  If you're not doing it already, we're here to convince you.  Here's why it matters:

It's true that these days most organizations concentration their marketing online via social media, email, forums and websites.  But that doesn't mean that print marketing is dead.  This week we received a flyer in the mail from the Chicago Region SCCA that really caught my attention.

If you post to your organization's Facebook page, you need to read this!

On Tuesday Facebook made some significant changes to the way your status updates are ranked in the News Feed.  According to Facebook, people generally don't like to interact with text updates (an update with text only, no images, or a text with a link only) from companies as much as text updates from their friends. So they've decided to demote the importance of text updates from companies in the News Feed.

The Early Bird Gets the Worm

It's a well-used saying, but if the shoe fits... well, you know what I'm going to say next.

Many attendees are planning for the entire season, both budget wise and time-wise, right now.    And they're coming to our National Calendar (all 900,000 of them) to look for events.  So if your event is not listed, chances are they're choosing an event from another organization.

As event organizers, a lot of us are using Facebook to promote our events. This is a smart approach! Of the 85% of all adults who use the internet, 67% of them are using social networking sites. And of all of the social media platforms, more people turn to Facebook for their "hobbies" than any other platform, perfect for our community.