August MarCom Updates

☀️ Updates are in for August! We're approaching a super-busy season across NICA. Thanks in advance for all of your help with all of the league/NICA events happening over the next few months!

Remember that this content is also found in the RUNNING UPDATES document sent to league directors each month.

GENERAL MARCOM NEWS

🙋🏼‍♀️NEW! MARCOM OFFICE HOURS Join the MarCom team starting August 6 for office hours every-other week!

Feedback is in: leagues let us know that office hours are a helpful resource, and we loved hosting during our HubSpot Marketing training in June. We’re making them a part of our ongoing schedule and support offerings for leagues.

→ A Zoom link to join has been added to the meeting list at the top of these monthly updates, and in our calendar below

→ Also linked in the MarCom Toolkit

→ Click this link to add the recurring meeting series on your Google Calendar

🗓️ UPDATED RESOURCE: EMAIL & CONTENT CALENDAR

An improved National content calendar is available for leagues. We’ve received many requests to be able to see when NICA National plans to publish content/send emails to our shared audiences. We’ve refined our new CONTENT CALENDAR to show social media and email in one place

→ https://staff.nationalmtb.org/content-calendar

*Schedule is subject to change based on partner requests, calendar shifts, etc. Please check in often for the latest content updates.

🆕 NEW RESOURCE: AI & THE NICA BRAND

In addition to NICA’s new organizational AI Guidance, the MarCom team has developed an in-depth resource regarding the use of AI in brand, marketing, and communications. Please review this document. We will be sharing this with league Marketing & Communications staff and leagues will have an opportunity to discuss/ask questions in our upcoming office hours.

🇺🇲USAC LOGOS FOR LEAGUE EVENT FLYERS

We now have pre-formatted logos for all leagues to add to all NICA league race and event flyers. These logos are located in the League Leadership Drive in the "Marketing Assets" folder and also linked here.

A summary of the USAC MOU was outlined in our May Running Updates. Specific logo use language below, for quick reference:

• Beginning for the fall ‘26 season, NICA leagues will include a small USAC logo on all NICA race flyers, recognizing them as a community partner. The logo will link to the USAC website. NICA MarCom will assist leagues with this deliverable.

There are horizontal and vertical versions of the graphics (shown below) with transparent backgrounds, as well as variations for use on both light and dark backgrounds. Please use the variation that works best for your flyer design, and add it where it makes sense for your league (i.e. near other listed partners). Link the graphic to usacycling.org – if desired, you can also share a link to this explainer re: our partnership with USAC.

HUBSPOT MARKETING RESOURCES

As we learn more about league needs and receive HubSpot support requests, we’re continuing to build our support library.

Here are our newest resources:

• In-between season segments (i.e. who to email when folks are still in the process of registering for the season - for example, during your preseason/registration season)
• [League] - Previous Season Parents and Riders
• [League] - Previous Season Coaches
  
  
• File and asset management best practices when uploading images to HubSpot for your emails
• Best practices
• Where to upload your files
• How to replace/update a file
• Naming conventions
• View-in-browser link recommendations
• From Name vs Reply Name - “From” names should not change, while reply names can change
• More links and “how-to’s” added directly to our Email Builder Checklist
  
  

REGIONALS UPDATES

Regionals communications are picking up!

• We’ve updated our Regionals comms dashboard (now features live updates every 5 min).
• We will be sending emails to league audiences each week this month to 1) build hype and 2) share info about registration

• Regionals hype campaign - 3 email series

• • July 28 (Venue hype)

• • August 8 (A weekend at Regionals)

• • August 22 (Gather your crew!)

• Regionals registration info

• August 28 (Reg opens soon!)

• September 1 (Reg is open!)
  
  

• We’ve updated website embeds to feature a new COUNTDOWN TO REGISTRATION timer. See it in action here
  
  
• Leagues, keep talking up Regionals! Remind your audience about the events: in your email and social media comms, race flyers, etc.! Point them to the event website, and share that registration opens September 1