Skip to content

February LEAGUE MARCOM TASKS

Picture of Em Meier

Hello league directors! Happy Monday! 🎉 533A1406

I’ve got two pieces of MarCom news that I wanted to highlight for you all today, as our fall leagues gear up for their coach registration opening this week and our spring leagues continue to dive into racing and events! 

Also, check out these team smiles in AZ! First race, fab vibes. Thanks to Sabrina Koogler for the awesome shot.

Onto our first point of order...

🙋 STAFF ROLL-CALL 😀

If you already completed this request after reviewing the league director monthly updates, thank you! Please skip to the Working Group section below.

In order to make sure we can provide leagues with the best possible MarCom support, we’re asking ALL league directors to complete this form sharing info about any folks who support your league in any of the following areas:

  • Social media
  • Emails/newsletters
  • Design, graphics, or web updates
  • Photography and media
  • OR or content creation of any kind

Why gather this info? This information is critical so that our team can connect your team with relevant support and resources. It ensures that we have invited the appropriate staff/volunteers to the NICA MarCom Slack channel AND that we’ve provided MarCom Toolkit access. We want NICA MarCom support to reach all of the people who need it to make your league communications/marketing as smooth and strong as possible! Remember that we’ll include YOU in all of our support communications as well, so you’re aware of all of the resources and tools we share.

→ Complete the form now! It is incredibly short and sweet and should take less than one minute of your time per entry. You can click this link OR scroll to the bottom of this post where we've embedded the form for easy access.

  • You’ll need to complete one form entry for each staff/volunteer who supports your league.
  • If you, the league director, are the main support of communications/marketing for your league, you do NOT need to complete the form. We will always include league directors on all MarCom correspondence.

Heads up: if we haven’t heard from your league in the next two weeks, we will reach out/follow up!

Note on Pit Zone Staff rosters: This form is intended to compliment your Pit Zone staff rosters. While Pit Zone supports race/event staff and volunteers, along with a few other limited staff roles, there is no option for specifying your MarCom-related staff role(s) beyond categorizing them as “other” in your Pit Zone roster. The purpose of this form is to help our team better identify and serve you and your staff according to MarCom-specific roles. You should still follow Pit Zone best practices for tracking staff to ensure that everyone is background checked, etc.

👥 WORKING GROUP 💡

We’re starting a small, informal working group on the subject of EMAIL MARKETING for NICA leagues. We are seeking 5-6 league directors willing to join an hour-long meeting 1-2x per month through at least August of this year (it is possible that we could extend this group if it is helpful and/or effective for us to continue to meet.)

Our objectives for this group include the following:

  1. Ensure that the NICA National MarCom team is on the right track: we want a complete and thorough understanding of evolving league needs regarding email marketing
  2. Share ideas and best-practices and highlighting opportunities for improvement
  3. Prioritize enhancements for NICA email marketing in 2026 and beyond
  4. Understand how the NICA MarCom team can best provide support for any future email platform transitions

We’re looking for folks who have a range of experience – whether you consider yourself an email expert who can whip up a call-to-action in the blink of an eye, OR if email is not your thing but you’re looking to learn more and share your experiences. We’d love a range of perspectives and experience levels.

→ Send Em a note to your interest in participation!
We’ll be formalizing the working group soon and will get back to you by the beginning of March


📄  ITERABLE LIST UPDATES WITH PIT ZONE RESET  📬

This one is just a heads-up/reminder regarding my email last week: we've reset your Iterable lists for you for the upcoming season. In order to preserve your lists from last year, we created static lists of your 2025 contacts. There is no further action necessary from leagues, but please read on for some info about why we've done this, plus best practices for selecting lists when sending emails during your early-season/pre-season.

Here’s what you need to know, and why we took this action:

  • Your dynamic lists for current families, coaches, riders, etc. in Iterable work through logic/an API feed that is connected to Pit Zone; they include anyone who fits the role descriptor (i.e. coach) and is also marked as “paid” for the current season. This dynamic feed is updated every 24 hours.
  • When Pit Zone resets next week, your # of Pit Zone contacts marked as “paid” will go to ZERO; this means that your dynamic “Current Families” and “Current Coaches” lists will also reset to zero contacts in Iterable.
  • To preserve the contacts you had from last season, we (the National Marcom team) created static lists before Pit Zone reset, so now you have lists that are a snapshot of all of the paid/registered contacts from the end of last season.
  • If you want to reach out to your audience from last year pre-Pit Zone reset (anyone involved in your league in 2025) AND anyone who is currently registered for your upcoming season – please use these new 2025 static lists AND include your dynamic lists, even if the # of contacts on the new dynamic list remains small for the time being while registration numbers build.

Your new lists appear in your Iterable accounts as follows: 2025 [League] [Audience] and include a descriptor. Your dynamic lists have stayed the same, and generally follow the naming convention of Current [League] [Audience].

NOTE: Pit Zone will be reset February 23, per the NICA Registration team. Please check in with the amazing Julia Lawrence and Sarah Thomson on any reset-related questions.

Feel free to reach out to Em if you have any questions about this process and the manual action that was taken to preserve your contact lists from the previous season. Please also remember that all historical seasonal Pit Zone data is pulled by our reg team should you have any more specific queries to make.

 

Thank you all! Here’s to a great week ahead —
Em