5 Hidden Costs of Managing Your Race Without a CRM

"Without a CRM, you're not just missing data—you’re missing the full picture of your participants. Tracking event history, total spend, and engagement manually isn’t just time-consuming—it’s nearly impossible. A CRM unlocks insights that drive smarter decisions and stronger relationships."

–Jackie Levi, Co-founder & Chief Strategy Officer at haku

Race directors have a lot on their plates. From planning logistics, securing sponsorships, and making sure participants have a great event experience, there are many moving pieces to an endurance event. But one critical and often overlooked component is how race data is managed. Without a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, you may be unknowingly creating inefficiencies that hurt your event’s growth and reputation. Here’s why managing your race without a CRM comes at a high cost.

Hidden Cost #1 - Loss of Institutional Knowledge

Turnover happens in every organization. If your key team members leave and take all their knowledge with them, who will know your VIP participants? Who will understand the history of your biggest fundraisers? Without a CRM, this crucial information disappears, forcing you to start from scratch every time someone new joins your team. This logic has made CRMs a key part of business operations for decades, but for races, the benefits are just as real. 

A good CRM gives you a clear view of participant history and even lets you add notes to profiles, to track valuable insights. Without it, your team is left guessing, and key relationships can suffer.

Hidden Cost #2 - Inconsistent Participant Experience

Your brand isn’t just about your logo and colors. It’s how people feel about your event at every step, from registration to ongoing communications. We can think of this as the participant journey, which is the sum of all experiences that your runners, volunteers, and even their fans have with your race.

Without a centralized CRM, different team members may provide conflicting responses, leading to an inconsistent experience for participants. A runner who has participated for years may be denied priority registration simply because their history wasn’t recorded. Someone may receive a generic response instead of a tailored message acknowledging their past engagement.

When participant data is scattered across spreadsheets or stored in employees’ heads, mistakes happen. A CRM ensures that all customer interactions are tracked and that participants receive consistent communication, strengthening trust in your brand.

Hidden Cost #3 - Ineffective Marketing

A one-size-fits-all marketing approach doesn’t work anymore. Without a CRM, you lack behavioral, demographic, and engagement data to personalize your messaging. Instead of sending targeted emails to first-timers and repeat participants, you’re sending the same generic message to everyone—leading to disengagement and lower conversion rates.

For example, a first-time participant may need detailed race-day instructions, while a veteran runner only needs a quick reminder. If critical information is buried in a long email, it’s easy for participants to overlook what matters to them, leading to confusion and a poor race-day experience.

With a CRM serving as your central point of truth for participant data, this is no longer an issue. Instead, you can send the exact message to the exact person you need to exactly when they need to receive it. 

Hidden Cost #4 -Challenges in Scaling Your Event

Managing 2,500 participants is vastly different from putting together an event with over 25,000. If you rely on manual processes and spreadsheets, scaling beyond a few thousand racers becomes nearly impossible. 

Different participant types, such as first-timers or seasoned runners need different communications. While everyone may need information about where to check-in on the day of your event, a new runner may need additional information about what to prepare or bring with them, while a repeat participant may not benefit from that message. Without a CRM, your lines of communication get cluttered, key details are missed, and participant satisfaction decreases. 

A CRM allows you to segment participants based on behavior and history, ensuring that each group receives relevant communication. Without this capability, growth becomes chaotic, and operational bottlenecks increase as your event expands.

Hidden Cost #5 - Data Privacy and Compliance Risks

With data privacy regulations becoming stricter, storing participant information on spreadsheets or transferring data manually between systems poses a serious risk. Are you tracking opt-ins correctly? Are participant details being stored securely? Without a CRM, you could unknowingly violate compliance laws, leading to potential legal and financial repercussions.

For example, if participant data is exported to a spreadsheet and shared via email, it’s vulnerable to leaks. If someone forgets to remove an unsubscribed participant from a marketing list, you risk sending unauthorized emails. A CRM centralizes data, helping to ensure compliance with privacy laws and protecting your organization from costly mistakes.

Grow Smarter with the Right CRM

• Not using a CRM creates risks and adds costs to your race organizing efforts 
• You risk losing institutional knowledge as volunteers and organizers join and leave your team
• Without a CRM, delivering great participant experiences is much more difficult
• It’s difficult to market effectively without a single source of truth
• CRMs make it far easier to scale your event beyond its current limits
• There are significant privacy and compliance risks when data is improperly stored

Not using a CRM isn’t just an operational inconvenience. There are hidden costs that affect your race’s efficiency, customer experience, marketing effectiveness, scalability, and compliance. Investing in the right CRM isn’t just about managing data; it’s about creating a seamless, professional, and secure experience for your participants. To avoid the hidden costs that we discussed above, a proper CRM tool can help. 

Ready to get started with haku? Explore how the endurance industry’s only native CRM can help you increase efficiency and revenue today! 

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