Within Race Roster CRM, you can create custom reports. These reports contain contact data from the events comprising your organization. As of December 2024, there are 4 types of custom reports to choose from and all contact data is acquired from event participant lists. Please reference our step-by-step guide, How to generate a custom report in my organization, if you want to jump right in. Below you will find an outline of each type, including use cases, as well as some key terms to understand the report building logic.
Report types
The first step of the process prompts you to select a report type.
Type 1: Contact report
Key questions: Who are my contacts? Who are my contacts [of X kind]?
The contact report is the most basic type. It will provide a list of all organizational contacts, or a subset of organizational contacts after some registration and/or demographic filtering. With this type, you can produce a list of all organizational contacts who are participants of specified events, event groups, certain event years, a given gender/sex, a given city of residence, etc. Here are some examples:
- all contacts
- contacts who are women
- contacts who registered in 2023 events
- contacts with the tag "Club Member"
- contacts who have registered in 5 km running sub-events, in the years 2020 through 2024
- contacts with "London" as their city of residence, aged 18 or over
Use cases: Event organizers who send out a periodic newsletter may want to target all subscribed contacts from their organization. They may also wish to target contacts who fit specific demographic or registration filters in order to thank them for participating, invite them to register for a new event, or make them an offer relevant to their gender, age group, location, preferred event distance, etc.
Type 2: Contact loyalty report
Key questions: Who currently has [X number of] registrations? Which participants have been loyal to my organization's events?
With this report type, you can acquire a list of contacts with a specified number of registrations. Depending on what you're looking for, you can make the filtering number exact, a maximum/minimum, or a set range. You may also apply registration and/or demographic filters to focus on a subset. Here are some specific examples:
- contacts with exactly 3 registrations
- contacts with a minimum of 4 registrations who are also French-speakers
- contacts who have between 3 and 5 registrations all in the year 2022, in the "West Coast Races" event group
Use case: Some event management companies operate a loyalty rewards program for their participants. An event organizer may want to label each set of contacts who have X, Y and Z number of registrations with X, Y and Z loyalty tags. Generating reports for each loyalty milestone will help with this task. You will be able to keep each group of contacts separate and target them with their own communications and announcements about newly unlocked achievements/rewards.
Type 3: Contact registration report
Key question: Which exact events are my contacts registered for?
A contact registration report lets you see what registrations each contact has on an individual level. In lieu of only viewing the contact's basic data (as with type 1, contact reports), a contact registration report also shows what registrations each contact contains, including the sub-event. Unfiltered, your report will contain all organizational registrations. If you apply registration and/or demographic filters, you can focus on a subset. Here are some specific examples:
- all organizational registrations (in other words, all registrations of contacts in the organization)
- registrations of contacts in the year 2024 (in other words, all 2024 registrations)
- registrations of contacts aged 18 or older
- registrations of contacts who are male
Use cases: This report type provides an insight into your contacts's registration preferences, particularly for subsets. For example, you might want to know which are the most popular events among women, and market those events accordingly. You may also want to determine which registrations are least popular among certain demographics, and work to improve your reach within those. This report type is not compatible with CRM email campaigns. It is intended for analysis.
Type 4: Contact retention report
Key question: Who still hasn't registered?
With this final report type, you can view which contacts have not registered for a specific event or in a specified event year, using the retention filters. By choosing Event retention, you can generate a report of contacts who registered for one (set of) event(s) but haven't registered for another. Specifying sub-events is optional. When choosing Event year retention, you can generate a report of who registered in one (set of) year(s) but hasn't registered in another. Here's is a close look at the retention filters:
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If you apply registration and/or demographic filters on top of the retention filters, you can focus on a subset of contacts. Here are some specific examples of contact retention reports you could create:
- contacts who registered in events X and Y who haven't registered in event Z
- contacts who registered in 2022 and/or 2023 who haven't registered in the current year
- Spanish-speaking contacts who registered in event X who haven't registered in event Y
Use case: A retention report provides insight into how effective you are at keeping participants from one year to the next, or one event to its next iteration. What's more, you can target contacts who specifically haven't registered in your current event with communications inviting them to sign up, without inadvertently targeting those who already have registered in the current event.
Update frequencies
Organizational contact data is acquired from event participant lists. Over time, the data appearing on a participant list can change due to:
- new registrations on a current event
- transfers, refunds, deferrals or deactivations on a current or past event
- individual participant data edits on a current or past event
- bulk imports on a current or past event
Depending on whether and how often you want your organization's custom reports to keep up with these changes in participant list data, you may choose an update type and frequency.
- Manually update report: Immediately after the report is created in your organization, it will have a date and time stamp. The data in the report will remain as is, like a snapshot in time. The report will only call for any updated data from its applicable events if you manually request it, at which point a new date and time stamp will apply. This choice works well if you want a report for a one-time email campaign, or for a progress or outcomes presentation to your event organizing committee. It will also suffice when the report only features data from past events, which is not typically expected to change over time.
- Automatically update report: Select the frequency with which you want the report to update itself (once daily, every 12 hours, etc). Immediately after the report is created, it will have a date and time stamp. Then, per the frequency, it will update with the next date and time stamp (and new data, if applicable). This works well when the report features data from current events, when you are using the report as a master list for a recurring newsletter, and/or when your report is synched to Mailchimp, Make or Zapier via a webhook.
If you have any questions or concerns on the different types of reports, please contact us at director@raceroster.com.
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