How Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon Achieved Three Consecutive Years of Double-Digit Growth

Building a bigger event without creating a bigger burden

For more than two decades, the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon has brought runners together to honor the victims, survivors, and first responders of the Oklahoma City bombing.

The organization wanted to extend that impact by welcoming more participants and generating more revenue to support its mission. But its goal was not simply to produce one year of higher registrations. The team wanted to create sustainable growth that could continue across multiple race cycles.

Achieving that required more than attracting additional runners. OKC needed to understand what was driving demand, make better marketing decisions while registration was still open, maximize its available event capacity, and generate more value from each participant.

It also needed to accomplish all of that without creating unsustainable work for its staff or making the participant experience more complicated.

OKC needed more than a platform that could process a growing number of registrations. It needed a connected revenue platform that would give its team the intelligence and flexibility to continually improve performance.

Turning registration data into a growth strategy

Using haku’s reporting capabilities, OKC reviews registration performance throughout the season, including where registrations are coming from, which audiences are responding, and where participation is growing or falling behind.

Because this information is available within the platform while registration and marketing are still active, the team can make decisions while there is still time to influence the outcome.

For Payton Bell, Media Engagement Director, that visibility changed the way the team evaluated its marketing:

“It’s unbelievably helpful to see what’s working and what’s not.”

OKC shares the insights with its marketing team and uses them to guide decisions across paid media, geographic targeting, airport signage, event expos, and campaigns surrounding other major races.

If registrations from a particular state or audience are behind expectations, the team can direct more attention and marketing investment there. If a campaign or market is performing especially well, OKC can identify the momentum and build on it.

The reporting also gives staff, agency partners, leadership, and volunteers a shared view of progress.

“We can see where we’re really doing well and where we can improve. That visualization is a great motivator.”

Rather than relying on instinct or conducting a retrospective after the event, OKC can use live conversion intelligence within the haku platform to continually refine its strategy throughout the season.

Converting demand into participation and revenue

As OKC’s marketing became more informed and participation continued to grow, the marathon began reaching capacity earlier than expected.

Selling out is a positive indicator of demand, but it can also create lost revenue. When registered participants cancel, their unused entries may go unfilled unless the organization has an efficient way to identify the newly available capacity and offer it to another customer.

Using haku, OKC was able to launch a waitlist immediately and begin capturing that demand. As entries became available, the team could move interested customers from the waitlist into the event and replace revenue that otherwise would have been lost through cancellations.

The process is strengthened by haku’s integration with TEAK. When participants who purchased refund protection receive an approved refund, their registrations can be canceled automatically. That makes the newly available capacity visible without requiring OKC’s staff to manually reconcile refunds and registrations across separate systems.

With an accurate, real-time view of registrations, cancellations, deferrals, and available capacity, OKC could continually evaluate how many additional runners it could accommodate within its operational limits.

The team used that visibility to manage its inventory more precisely, fill newly available entries, and responsibly release additional capacity when appropriate.

haku provided the connected infrastructure required to recognize changing availability and act on it quickly. OKC remained in control of its capacity decisions while gaining the flexibility to convert more participant demand into registrations and revenue.

Expanding revenue beyond registration

Like many endurance events, OKC ultimately faces a limit on the number of participants it can accommodate. Once an event approaches capacity, future revenue growth cannot depend solely on selling more registrations.

Additional growth must come from creating more value through each participant relationship.

As a connected revenue platform, haku enables OKC to offer relevant products, services, and add-on event experiences throughout the registration journey. Participants can purchase training apparel, race photography, parking, and other add-ons within the same streamlined transaction as their registration.

That makes it easier for participants to purchase everything they need while increasing average order value for the event.

OKC also uses haku to sell and digitally manage ancillary experiences such as training runs, parking access, event tickets, and entry to its post-race 26.2 tent.

These are not simply products added to a shopping cart. They are extensions of the participant’s overall event experience. haku enables OKC to promote, sell, fulfill, and manage those experiences digitally while keeping each purchase connected to the participant’s record.

This creates value in several ways:

• Participants gain a simpler way to discover and purchase relevant experiences.
• OKC generates additional revenue beyond the registration fee.
• Digital tickets and permits reduce printing, manual fulfillment, and administrative costs.
• Purchases remain connected to each participant record and customer record, giving the team a more complete view of customer engagement and value.
• Ancillary experiences become scalable revenue opportunities rather than separate operational projects.

By bringing registration and ancillary revenue channels together, haku allows OKC to grow both participation and the value generated from every participant.

Using each race cycle to improve the next

The data generated throughout the registration season also gives OKC a stronger foundation for future planning.

The team can review historical registration behavior, evaluate when demand accelerated, understand the effects of pricing and marketing decisions, and identify new opportunities across fundraising, engagement, and participant revenue.

OKC can then use those insights to improve the next race cycle. This has included using historical registration data to inform a new pricing schedule designed around the event’s actual demand patterns.

The haku team complements the platform by bringing experience from endurance events around the world. It can introduce relevant ideas, share applicable industry practices, and help OKC identify additional ways to use the platform to achieve its goals.

For Marathon General Manager & Director of Operations, Lynne Porter, that proactive involvement distinguishes the partnership:

“You guys are continually looking at things and suggesting ideas that will help our bottom line.”

The result is a productive combination of technology and partnership. haku gives OKC direct access to its performance data and the tools to act on it, while the haku team helps the organization recognize additional opportunities and get more value from the platform.

Each registration season therefore produces more than registrations and revenue. It generates intelligence OKC can apply to make the next season even stronger.

Scaling without sacrificing the experience

Sustained growth also places more participants, transactions, and operational demands on a relatively lean team.

haku helps OKC absorb that growth by providing responsive support throughout registration season and working onsite during race weekend.

Having haku team members at the event allows registration issues, last-minute changes, and participant questions to be addressed in real time. Instead of waiting for assistance from a remote support queue, OKC’s staff and participants can get immediate help during the most critical point in the event cycle.

That support reduces pressure on OKC’s team and helps prevent small issues from becoming negative participant experiences.

“It’s just the best customer service you get. The reps are willing to go above and beyond, and they’re really there to help both your experience and your participants’ experience.”

This allowed OKC to increase the size of the event without placing the full operational burden of that growth on its internal staff.

The result: Three years of sustained growth

Since moving to haku in 2023, the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon has increased participation by 53%, adding more than 9,600 participants.

That growth was not concentrated in one exceptional year. The event achieved double-digit participation growth across three consecutive race cycles.

Over the same period, event revenue increased by 59%, outpacing the rate of participation growth.

The relationship between those results is important. OKC did not grow revenue simply by registering more runners. The organization also created more value beyond the registration fee through integrated products, services, and event experiences.

The result was not simply a larger event. It was a stronger and more sustainable revenue model.

From registration platform to revenue platform

OKC built and executed a connected growth strategy using haku as its connected revenue platform.

Registration intelligence helped the team understand where demand was coming from and informed more precise marketing decisions. Stronger demand was captured through flexible waitlist and capacity management. Integrated products and ancillary experiences increased the value of each participant relationship. Historical performance informed future pricing and growth strategies.

Each part of the strategy operated through the same platform and strengthened the next.

That is the difference between processing registrations and enabling sustainable growth.

haku gives endurance organizations the intelligence to understand performance, the flexibility to respond to demand, and the connected revenue capabilities to generate more value from every participant. Combined with a team that continually identifies new opportunities, haku helps events transform growth from an annual ambition into a repeatable strategy.

Ready to see what’s possible for your organization? Let’s talk about your goals and how haku can help you reach them. Connect with us today.