CASE STUDY
WICKED WINE RUN
WICKED WINE RUN
ACTIVE Network Activity Cloud® provides
the insights that allow Wicked Wine Run to
quickly capitalize on registration trends, build
stronger relationships with their partners and
create enhanced experiences for their guests.
Several years ago in Burleson, Texas, Krys and Sam Davis created
a new one-off endurance event for their friends and athletic clients.
The event, dubbed the Wicked Wine Run, featured a 5K run and a
1K walk through a local winery, with food trucks, live entertainment
and, of course, wine. The race was so popular that three years later
they’ve expanded into 8 states with over 30 races.
With so many races, maximizing time and energy is imperative,
so they turned to ACTIVE Network Activity Cloud®.
“Prior to using Activity Cloud, we’d have to download
spreadsheets, so it was just a lot more time consuming and
we didn’t track the data as often,” Krys said. Using ACTIVE
Network Activity Cloud® also contributed to some startling
discoveries. “With Activity Cloud, it showed very clearly what was
happening,” she said. Playing to this, they’ve defined new event
locations as well as their marketing strategies for each race to
better target potential runners.
You mentioned you started the San Antonio race because of the info
you saw coming out of Activity Cloud?
Yes, absolutely. We knew we wanted to put a race in San Antonio. We would contact
venues here and there and just couldn’t find the right venue, so we decided we
weren’t going to push the issue. But when we saw how many people were coming in
from San Antonio, we decided to find and book a venue that week. The information
was screaming at us that we had to go to San Antonio.
20%-25%
Increase of runners for the Wicked Wine Run in San Antonio because of
marketing tactics used, thanks to Activity Cloud
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CASE STUDY
WICKED WINE RUN
Was San Antonio the first race you used
Activity Cloud?
No. I’d used Activity Cloud in 2015 for the Austin and
Dallas events. However, when we did the most recent
Austin race, we were easily able to see just how many
people came from San Antonio in Activity Cloud.
Prior to using Activity Cloud, we’d have to download
spreadsheets, so it was just a lot more time consuming
and we didn’t track the data as often.
As soon as we saw the amount of San Antonio
residents in the Austin event, we knew we needed to
try harder to put a race in San Antonio. When we did
place it in San Antonio, we looked at where
participants were coming from during the first week of
registration, which we had never done before. Through
that first month, we were flabbergasted to see that the
largest population of registrants was from three hours
away in Corpus Christi. We completely changed our
marketing strategy because we normally only target
people within a one-hour’s driving radius. With Activity
Cloud, it showed very clearly what was happening.
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In terms of registrations, how did Activity Cloud impact the San Antonio race?
I would say that Activity Cloud for San Antonio gave us a boost of 20% to 25%,
just from the sheer numbers of runners we got from Corpus Christi. We would
have had them organically, but once we started advertising and marketing there,
the numbers grew tremendously and maintained.
Did seeing your forecasted revenue and
participant stats in Revenue Generator affect
how you planned for event day?
Now that you’ve used Activity Cloud for three
separate events, how reliable do you feel like
the data and forecasting is?
Yes, absolutely. There is a lot of equipment, products
and services tied into our race other than T-shirts and
bibs, like wine glasses and the wine, itself.
I think the data is really accurate. Toward the
beginning of the race, obviously the range is a little
bit bigger for the predictions that are made in terms
of revenue and participation. As you get closer to
your race, the range gets closer and more precise. I
really like the predictions. They’ve really helped me
communicate with our venues, vendors and food
trucks. Those predictions at 90 days out, 60 days out,
30 days out and so on were a little more difficult prior
to having Activity Cloud.
Prior to using Activity Cloud, it took us time to get
the information together and disseminate it to all the
people who need to order supplies for the race. With
Activity Cloud, it’s all on there when I open up my
dashboard. For example, I got an email today from
one of my vendors asking where we were as far as
registrations and I just took a screenshot and sent it to
him. Now he knows exactly how many people are in
the 5K, 1K, and both, so he can plan for how much wine
he’ll be serving. We don’t have to pull up any special
reports. That’s really cool for us.
With us, our reputation means everything. Now, when
vendors and venues ask us for registration numbers
far in advance, we can show them exactly what we’re
looking at and know that those numbers are going to
be pretty accurate. Our vendors and venues love how
accurate we are because they have very little left over.
CASE STUDY
WICKED WINE RUN
How else has Activity Cloud changed the way you operate
your business?
I could get lost in the data for days. I geek out over this stuff. It’s useful to me from a
business perspective because we get to know our runners even more, like knowing
where they’re coming from or where potential registrants are located. We wouldn’t
have known that before. Previously, we would advertise right in neighborhood we
were in. For example, the Dallas/Ft. Worth race is in a smaller town and we’ve always
advertised there, but very few of our runners actually come from that town. Activity
Cloud is telling us where people are searching for a race and we can go target people
in the ads we’re doing on other platforms.
“Instead of making assumptions based on very old
formulas for 5K advertising, now we can start in and
around the race and then within a few weeks, can
really whittle down where we should be advertising
using the ACTIVE PAI, online interest, and historical
interest data.”
- Krys Davis, Founder and Co-Owner of the Wicked Wine Run
Was it difficult to learn and implement Activity Cloud?
My Account Manager at ACTIVE showed me the basic things, which are super user
friendly. I gave my staff the three-minute Cliff Notes and they were able to use those
basic functions very well. Recently, as you guys developed more with Activity Cloud,
I sat down with ACTIVE’s reps again and learned even more about what I can do
with different functions, which are awesome and we’re using them. But I think for the
average race director, just the very basic functions of the dashboards for Intelligent
Insights, Participant Tracker and Revenue Generator are great. Just pulling up the
dashboard, not touching another button, gives you a lot of information.
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CASE STUDY
WICKED WINE RUN
How have you used Target Marketer
to analyze your digital advertising?
I know you’re thinking about incorporating
Activity Cloud’s dynamic pricing for the
Martini Madness event. How’s that going?
You just started using ACTIVE Target
Marketer®. Will it streamline your marketing
processes?
We were just introduced to that function a few
weeks ago, and didn’t know it existed. We are very
excited about it. We need to rework some things on
our website because we had already opened up
registration prior to learning about it. It’s such a cool
thing to set your pricing based on your demand, or
when you reach a certain number of registrations. I
love that you don’t have to babysit it or go back and
do anything. Once you set those parameters, it will
automatically transition your prices for you based on
your demand or the number of people you will allow
at that price.
Let me explain how we tracked our marketing prior to
Target Marketer. I control the social media messaging.
However, I have an analytics guy and web developer
who helps, and we work with ACTIVE to track the
entire click through process of our campaigns.
Everybody gets on the phone multiple times, and
they speak in a language that I do not understand and
other race directors probably don’t understand. The
last time we set up tracking, it took two weeks to get
the code to process correctly. Now that I have access
to Target Marketer, I can do all the things these three
people were doing for me, by myself, faster and more
efficiently. And I can analyze my data faster. So not
only has it saved me a lot more time, but it’s saving me
a ton of money because I can do it myself and don’t
have to pay others to do it.
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If you’re using Google Ads,
Facebook or Instagram, you
could spend two hours just trying
to figure out one thing. Even
though we just started using
Target Marketer, I just pull up
the dashboard and it tells me
everything. Like, that, in the last 30
days, a Facebook post was seen
4 million times, reached 3 million
people, and 145,000 people were
engaged on that post. I don’t have
to click on anything - it’s just there.
I can’t tell you how amazing that
is to a person who needs data to
figure out the best way to manage
their race. Not only so that we’re
profitable, but so we can dedicate
most of our time figuring out how
to make this the best experience
for runners, because that’s what
it’s really about.
CASE STUDY
WICKED WINE RUN
“I could get lost in the data for days. I geek out
over this stuff. It’s useful to me from a business
perspective because we get to know our runners
even more, like knowing where they’re coming from
or where in our race’s areas interested runners are.”
- Krys Davis, Founder and Co-Owner of the Wicked Wine Run
Let’s talk about the ACTIVE Participant Tracker map section.
Have you used the other maps, like the ACTIVE Participant Activity
Index (PAI) map?
Yes, with towns we’re not as familiar with. We live in Texas, so far all the major cities
that we operate in — Austin, Dallas, San Antonio, Houston — we have a good idea
of the surrounding towns and suburbs to market to. When we go to places we’re not
as familiar with, for instance New Orleans, we advertise in and around the city. While
using Activity Cloud, we saw that New Orleans isn’t even on the top three participant
cities that registrants are joining us from. They’re mostly coming from Baton Rouge,
and we’re not even advertising there. So we completely changed our marketing
strategy. Then we looked at the ACTIVE PAIs and online interest in these other towns
around Baton Rouge or the vineyard to see how to retarget that area. So instead of
making assumptions based on very old formulas for 5K advertising, now we can whittle
down our advertising using the ACTIVE PAI, online interest, and historical interest data.
Have you used ACTIVE Participant Tracker maps to plan event day
traffic routes and signage?
Not with traffic routes. Instead, we’ve done something similar with our packet pickup.
About 80% to 90% of our races are done at vineyards. We really like to keep events at
cool places, and those places are not usually within the major cities. We will look at the
Participant Tracker data and put the packet pickup in a location where the majority of
our runners are coming from.
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CASE STUDY
WICKED WINE RUN
Why do you think you’ve had so much success with the Wicked
Wine Runs?
By the Numbers
20%-25%
Increase of runners for the
Wicked Wine Run in San Antonio
because of marketing tactics
used, thanks to Activity Cloud
4 hrs
Average amount of time a
participant stays at the event,
from the race through the
post-race activities
We’re not just trying to create a fun 5K where people run for 20 or 30 minutes, stick
around for 15 minutes, and then go home. Our average participant is staying at our
race for 4 hours. That’s unheard of and it’s because we’re making it a really cool
experience for them. They’re not inviting all their friends, having all these costumes
made, and booking the hotels and the travel arrangements just to do a race. They’re
coming to make this an epic experience that they’re going to talk about for the rest of
their lives. Most of our participants have never done a race; maybe one of them is a
runner. When you tell people they get to have wine on the course or at the finish, and
that it’s a festival; they say they absolutely want to do it. People come to us and say
they haven’t done anything like our race and that they’re coming back next year, too.
We see comments our social media pages all the time about how people have lost
weight and started running and training for the 5K. I really believe that we’re creating a
lifetime experience for a lot of people. And this is a legacy I’m happy to leave behind.
LEARN MORE
Find out how ACTIVE Network Activity Cloud® can help you
by visiting ActivityCloud.com
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