Author Archives: Chris Bradle

Selling to your event sponsors and local companies just got easier

The Virtual Race Bags development lab is constantly churning around new concepts in an effort to keep our service as the Ultimate Digital Goody Bag Solution. This month we are releasing the most revolutionary tool in our company's history. When we first envisioned the platform, a key part of the plan was to enable events to easily sell offer placements and remove barriers for event sponsors or local companies to create their own offers. Today we are proud to share with you our latest development release – The Goody Bag Offer Builder Tool (beta). Read More

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Behind the Scenes with Bart Yasso

The Virtual Race Bags team participated in the inaugural Runner's World Half Marathon & Festival last week. Our friend Bart Yasso, Chief Running Officer at Runner's World, was kind enough to give us a tour of the Rodale headquarters during our visit.  We also got a chance to ask him about Rodale's decision to utilize a digital goody bag for their event, deciding on (of course) the Virtual Race Bags platform.

Thanks to Bart and the entire Rodale team for hosting such a great event!

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Inside the Bag – Understanding Your Reports

Did you know all the activities inside your goody bag are tracked and measured for you? That's right. One of the most powerful features about the Virtual Race Bags platform is found in the statistics reports generated behind the scenes for each goody bag. 

Since we have a wide range of both technical and non-technical clients, we thought it would be helpful to walk-through reading reports and understanding digitial marketing terminology. Let's dive in. Read More

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Bag Update: September 2012

Introducing our first of many "Bag Updates" which covers details about the new features, tools or other enhancements we have released into our Virtual Race Bags software platform. This platform is the "engine beneath the hood" that powers and creates the entire digital goody bag experience for both you and your participants. 

Here are the new features straight out the Development Lab for September 2012. >> Read More

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Introducing monthly “Bag Updates”

Technology is constantly in motion and evolving which seems to open new ideas or concepts almost daily. Our primary objective in the "Development Lab" is to shape a software platform to deliver the best goody bag experience on the planet. We approach this goal by listening to the needs and suggestions of our events, sponsors, national brand partners and most importantly – the event participants. From this insight and feedback we plan, develop and launch new features, tools and enhancements. Each month our platform is taking on new upgrades and features to deliver the first-class experience we envision and sought ever by the industry.

Since our events are coming on board inside many different time tables, we will share a "Bag Update" each month which will outline each new feature release during the month. These updates are important to follow so if your event is in coming months you will know better what to expect from your goody bag experience.

Be on the look out for our monthly email newsletter, which is delivered during the last week of each month and features our overviews of the latest "Bag Updates".

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A Glimpse of National Brand Partners at OR Summer Market 2012

The virtual event bag is all about the participant experience.  That is the theme that drives the team at Virtual Race Bags and it runs through everything we provide in our platform.  If participants are excited and engaged, then sponsors will get the results they seek.  If sponsors are getting results, they will continue to invest in events with sponsorship support.

One way we seek to help deliver an excellent participant experience is by working with our National Brand Partners to bring offers for high quality, relevant products and services that participants will value.  To search out these Partners, our team made a stop at the Outdoor Retailer Summer Market at the beginning of August in Salt Lake City. This 3-minute video captures the highlights of our entire 5-day tradeshow adventure and many of the brands we were able to see.

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The Engaging Value Behind a Claim

new claiming offers imageParticipants love being showered with value and have come to expect events to deliver the goods. Based on this reality, our product development team has been in the lab working on communicating and expressing the value of the digital goody bag, to event participants. Today, we are pleased to announce one of the biggest product updates in our history.

Introducing the Claim. Starting next week, we move from telling participants to visit the bag, to inviting them to claim their race bag. Sounds simple right? Read More

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Introducing Our New and Improved Digital Goody Bag Experience!

In the world of technology things change almost overnight. That new tablet or phone you bought this morning will quickly be one-upped by advancements that continue to amaze. The same can be said for services and features in website application development.

About a year ago we officially launched into the endurance event industry touting a simple, minimalist design style for our feature rich virtual goodie bag experience. At the time we were more than excited to stamp this design on all our event’s race bags. As a passionate group of endurance athletes our core concern has and always will be delivering quality offers and truly special deals to event participants. While having fancy sound effects or dancing pandas popping up in race bag would have been mildly entertaining they would have been unnecessary “effects”.

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The Green Weekend

Could there be a better way to celebrate going green than producing three Virtual Race Bags for St. Patrick's Day celebration events? This past weekend we literally got our green on with The Yuengling Shamrock Marathon Weekend in Virginia Beach, The Shamrock 4 Miler in Charlotte, and The St. Patrick's Day Human Race in St. Paul.

While each event shared the characteristic green they were unique in their own rights. We thought it would be fun to share some of the highlights and best practices from each of the these fun goody bags.

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National Runner Survey

Calling all RUNNERS! What motivates you to run? What is your favorite race distance? How often do you run? You are being invited to participate in Running USA’s 2011 National Runner Survey, a comprehensive survey to assess the demographics, lifestyle, attitudes, habits, and product preferences of the running population nationwide. The National Runner Survey is easy to access and available online. All responses are completely anonymous and confidential. Don’t miss this opportunity to join other runners nationwide!

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