The Challenge

The NYC Marathon can never exceed 50,000 runners, it’s a limit set by the city. That limitation poses a unique challenge for NYRR - how can we create growth opportunites as a business without increasing race capacity?

Tasked with the challenge, our teams utilized the findings from our previous engagement of re-designing the customer experience. We concluded that, for most runners, the NYC Marathon is a one-in-a-lifetime experience –one that tourists, casual participants and families want to memorialize. Understanding this customer sentiment, we set out to re-think their marathon Ecommerce strategy.

The Approach

Historically, the commerce function of NYRR’s business has been the purchase of races. We wanted to change that by expanding our CX strategy to create ‘digital experiences’. Instead of just participating in the marathon – what if a runner could buy virtual training sessions or classes leading up to the marathon and photos of running the marathon?

By envisioning commerce in a different way, we could extend the running community without extending physical real estate. Runners would be able to be a part of the experience without limiting themselves to just a single race.

The Solution

With Sitecore XM already being used for marketing purposes, and Sitecore XP being used to create the personalization engines – it was an easy decision to use Sitecore XC for the commerce experience. Through building atop the Sitecore ecosystem, we created a new commerce model that’s constantly, fluidly evolving and changing the way NYRR does business.