Why You Need a Chatbot for Your Next Running Event

As a race director, how do you create an experience your participants will love and talk about long after the race is over?

Runners lead pretty active lifestyles, they are tech-savvy, and they’re used to using technology tools and gadgets that help them get the most out of their runs. They like to consume information and content while on the go, on their own terms.

So, forget about sending them emails or making them download yet another app just so they can keep up with everything that’s happening during your running event.

You need to provide convenient, lightweight, and interactive experience, and there’s an effective way to accomplish that — chatbots!

Why Chatbots for Running Events?

While you may think it’s all about getting people to register and ensuring flawless logistics on the race day, a bit more than that goes into creating memorable event experiences.

Every step of the way matters. From pre-event engagement to race day interaction with participants and post-event data insights that result in better decisions, an

You can leverage an event chatbot to manage race schedule, sponsors’ content, and important logistics info. Plus, an event chatbot can help you reach thousands of participants with the effectiveness and feel of a one-to-one conversation.

The value for participants?

All this information is available to runners and spectators through a familiar chat interface within messaging apps they already use and love, such as Viber, Facebook Messenger, or Telegram.

Event chatbot is a tool that can help you through your entire event lifecycle, supporting you before, during, and after your running event.

Before the race

How can you best leverage an event chatbot before your running event?

Use this real-time communication channel to build excitement leading up to your race.Promote your event chatbot to participants so they’re aware that it exists and then send relevant, contextual, timely messages to registrants.

Hype your participants with cool prizes, side-events, and real-time notifications about the race. You can also train your chatbot to provide information runners may need pre-event, such as race details, course map, and schedule.

On race day

Having a chatbot customized for your running event available to answer your participants’ questions and provide support on-demand will be of immense value to you and your team, freeing up your time so you can focus on creating a great experience for everyone.

You’ll automate and scale communication and support while minimizing the number of live questions from participants.

You can train your event chatbot to provide any information that runners may need, when they need it, including:

• Event details and timeline
• Course Map
• How to pick up starting package
• Parking location
• Refreshment stations
• Rewards
• Sponsors and special offers

You can also leverage a chatbot to keep runners up-to-date with real-time notifications about important race updates, like weather condition, route changes, and more.

After the Race

As someone who’s responsible for the success of your event, you’ll want to know how attendees felt about the race, what they liked or didn’t like.

You can use an event chatbot to send a follow-up survey to all runners to learn about their experience, get their feedback, and improve your next event based on those insights.

Most chatbot platforms will also have a capability to track relevant KPIs and provide you with a detailed view of the engagement level of the running event participants.

You’ll be able to see the performance of delivered broadcast messages, the activity of users over time, the breakdown of most asked questions, and more.

Boost Sponsorship Opportunities

Sponsorships are key to successful events and leveraging a chatbot as a channel for displaying sponsor offers that seamlessly blend into runners’ experience can help you attract more big brand sponsorships.

You’ll provide them with great exposure and a way to build affiliation between their brand and your participants (their potential customers) which, at the end of the day, is what sponsors are looking for. With chatbot analytics, you can also easily track and demonstrate impact to sponsors.

Another thing you can do to maximize the value of your event chatbot investment is to cross promote an upcoming race to the right participants based on their interests.

Takeaways

Chatbots for running events can be a great tool to help race directors engage their participants, manage event content more efficiently, and get live audience feedback.

They’re a natural fit for the dynamic nature of running events — chatbots are easy to access, available on-demand, and can converse with runners in natural language via a familiar messaging interface. There are no extra downloads or logins since chatbots are available on the messaging apps most people already have on their smartphone.

The event chatbot responds to runners’ expectations for seamless access to event info and updates about the race, while at the same time enabling organizers to automate and scale communication and support.

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Visit the SpiceFactory blog for more articles about chatbots for the events industry.