How M3S Sports Increased Loyalty Program Participation by More Than 4x

The Opportunity

M3S Sports manages 13–14 events annually in the same market, giving participants many ways to remain involved throughout the year. Someone might race one event, volunteer at another, and return season after season.

That created a major opportunity: encourage more people to explore the full M3S portfolio and recognize those who had already demonstrated years of commitment.

But the team could not easily act on what it knew about its community. Participant history stretched across more than two decades, multiple registration systems, changing email addresses, duplicate records, and spreadsheets. Identifying who had completed a challenge or reached a participation milestone often required manual analysis using pivot tables.

The difficulty was not a lack of data. It was the effort required to turn that data into something useful.

M3S had long envisioned loyalty programs that would reward continued participation, but the team needed a reliable way to answer fundamental questions:

• How many M3S events has this person completed?
• Does their history appear under multiple email addresses?
• Who qualifies for a challenge, milestone, or recognition program?
• Which event would be most relevant to promote to them next?

Until M3S could answer those questions accurately and efficiently, its loyalty strategy remained difficult to scale.

Where haku Made the Difference

haku gave M3S the ability to turn years of scattered participant activity into an accurate, actionable understanding of its community.

The difference was not simply having historical data available. It was being able to connect activity belonging to the same person, validate participation across multiple years and events, and use that history to shape loyalty programs and outreach.

That changed what the team could accomplish. Instead of manually reconstructing participant histories for each initiative, M3S could identify meaningful patterns across its community: who returned regularly, who participated in multiple events, who volunteered, and who was approaching a milestone.

With that understanding, M3S could move its loyalty strategy from an idea to a repeatable part of how it grows participation across its portfolio.

As Danielle Wagner, Marketing & Communications Lead at M3S Sports, explained:

“We can really see the participant as a person and not just a number, not just an email, not just a registration.”

Turning Decades of History Into Meaningful Recognition

M3S worked with haku to make 20-25 years of event history usable, including records dating back to 2004.

That history was essential to recognizing the organization’s most committed participants. Over time, however, the same person could appear under different email addresses or in records imported from multiple legacy systems. Without an accurate view of their complete history, M3S risked overlooking years of participation.

By resolving duplicate records and connecting activity to the right participant, the team gained a clearer view of how individuals had engaged across the portfolio.

That allowed M3S to recognize the full relationship behind each registration. A participant was no longer defined only by their most recent race, but by the events they had completed, the roles they had played, and the community they had helped build over time.

Growing Challenge Participation by More Than 4x

With a more reliable understanding of participant history, M3S could create loyalty experiences that motivated people to explore more of its events.

The M3S Sports Challenge shows the impact. In the previous year, approximately a quarter of the people currently signed up had completed the challenge. This year, with one event still remaining, more than 4x the number of participants are pursuing it.

The growth demonstrated that loyalty could become more than a retrospective reward. It could actively encourage participants to register for additional events and deepen their relationship with M3S throughout the year.

M3S also began exploring other ways to recognize long-term engagement, including a milestone pin program for the OhioHealth Capital City Half Marathon. Reliable participation history gives the team a practical way to identify eligible participants and make that recognition feel accurate and meaningful.

Making Every Campaign More Relevant

Participant history also gives M3S greater context for marketing its events.

Previously, the team had to piece together registration data and marketing tools to identify audiences. Now, it can use what it knows about past participation to determine which event, challenge, or experience may be most relevant to each person.

As Event and Registration Manager Brent Lalonde explained:

“Having the CRM in the same platform as race registration is what makes a big difference.”

Instead of approaching every campaign as a new interaction, M3S can build on the relationship that already exists. Someone who regularly participates in one event can be introduced to another. A participant nearing a challenge milestone can receive timely encouragement. A long-time member of the community can be recognized for their continued involvement.

This gives M3S a more informed way to bring people back while making its communications more relevant to each participant’s experience.

The Results

Loyalty and Engagement

• More than 4x the previous year’s participants pursued the M3S Sports Challenge 
• Greater participation across a portfolio of 13–14 annual events
• New opportunities to recognize long-term participation through programs such as milestone pins

Participant Intelligence

• 18–20 years of event history made usable, including records dating back to 2004
• Clearer participant histories across registrations, volunteer activity, purchases, and events
• More accurate recognition of returning participants whose activity spans different email addresses or legacy systems

Marketing Impact

• More relevant audiences informed by past participation and engagement
• Greater ability to promote the right next event based on each person’s history
• A stronger foundation for turning one-time registrations into lasting relationships

M3S Sports has transformed years of participant activity into a practical strategy for increasing loyalty across its event portfolio.

With one event still remaining in the M3S Sports Challenge, participation has already grown to more than four times the previous year’s completions, driven in large part by the new rewards program. The team can also more accurately recognize long-term participants, develop new loyalty initiatives, and use engagement history to promote the most relevant next experience.

M3S Sports can now treat loyalty as an ongoing growth strategy rather than a labor-intensive, one-off initiative.

As Brent summarized:

“I would never go back to trying to piecemeal it all together.”

Why It Matters for Endurance Organizations

Multi-event organizations have a unique opportunity to build relationships that extend well beyond a single race. But loyalty does not come from offering more events alone. It comes from understanding how people engage over time and giving them meaningful reasons to return.

Reliable participant history allows organizations to recognize commitment, create attainable challenges, celebrate milestones, and recommend the next relevant experience. It also turns data that might otherwise sit unused into a practical tool for increasing participation.

For M3S Sports, that shift helped turn decades of history into momentum for future growth.