Domains 101: Choosing a Registrar

Posted on February 23, 2010May 5, 2015 by MD

The thought of registering a domain intimidates a lot of people, but it’s easier than you might realize. However, before I get into that, there’s one point I cannot stress enough – Register your domain YOURSELF in YOUR OWN account.

DO NOT have your neighbor, ad agency, web designer or anyone else register a domain in their account for you. If someone is helping you, that’s fine, but be firm on this point. You wouldn’t give someone the keys and title to your car would you? When you let someone register your domain for you in their account, that’s essentially what you’re doing. You’re giving up all ownership rights to the domain because in most instances that alone shows ownership. It’s much harder to prove theft when the account that created the domain still has control of it.

I have heard horror story after horror story of people finding themselves in a bad situation that could easily have been avoided had they done this one little thing.

Choosing a Registrar

The number of options can be intimidating, but it’s well worth it to put a little effort into selecting one. Some things you should consider:

What TLD do you want to register?

The majority of registrars handle .com and .net but there are more than 250 options currently and many more potentially on the horizon, all with varying restrictions and requirements. You can view a list of them here.

Do you want your hosting at the same place it’s registered?

Just like not every hosting company offers domain registration, not every domain registrar offers hosting. (Unless you have your own server, and if you’re reading this you probably don’t, you need web hosting for your site to be accessible.)

How much access do you need to your domain?

Some registrars limit what you can access, or charge you to have access to things such as DNS, CNAME records etc. Basically what you need to decide is whether you want to have to contact the registrar’s support staff to have them make a change anytime you need to, or if you want to be able to manage it yourself.

Will you need privacy protection?

Not every registrar offers it and many charge extra. Also, depending on what TLD you choose, this may not even be an option.

What’s their reputation?

First off, you want an ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) certified registrar. Second, do a search on them. What do people like and dislike? Be wary of any that get complaints about transfer difficulties, and especially any that attempt to charge for transfers.

Is their site user friendly?

If their site is difficult to navigate before you’ve even registered something, don’t expect it to be much easier when you’re trying to manage your account. Do they have multiple ways for you to get support should you need it? Do they make that information easy to find? Personally, I would be wary of any company that makes it too difficult to contact them.

What are they charging?

Don’t base your decision solely on price. Many registrars frequently run deals on new registrations and transfers, but charge more for renewals. Some registrars charge a little bit more but include extras in the price that will cost you a lot more to add at other registrars. Prices can vary substantially across all the TLDs, so it doesn’t hurt to do a little comparison shopping.

Where are they located?

You will find registrars located throughout the world. Don’t feel like you have to use a registrar from your home country, but be aware there are some inherent risks when you don’t. This could easily be a post in itself, so I will just give you one key point to consider. Is your domain at risk because of the local government?

7 Sins of Email Marketing

Posted on December 6, 2009May 5, 2015 by MD

Email is part of our lives and part of most marketing plans because of how inexpensive it is. Yet, as important as email marketing is, people still just seem to overlook the obvious. Dive in to my 7 sins of email marketing aka enormous pet peeves.

1. Bad From or Subject Lines

Think about how your email appears to your recipient. You only have a few seconds so make them count. What you think is creative or cute could very well look like spam. Make sure you have something in either the From line or the Subject line to make it clear to your customer that it is something they want to read. If you have an employee name for the from line, then make sure it’s clear in your subject line why they want to open it. Not a day goes by that I don’t get legitimate emails that I can’t tell what they are. The low end risk is they simply hit delete, but the high end risk is you get enough negative hits that you get blacklisted.

2. Bad Links

Usually if you’re sending out a marketing oriented email, you have an end goal in mind – don’t ruin it up by messing up your links. The absolute worst is having links that don’t work. You’ve just wasted your time and resources with nothing to show for it. Having generic links aren’t much better. If you send out an email highlighting a specific item but you drop your customers off on your home page, in most cases you’ve lost them. Very few people are going to take the time to search for the item that they just clicked through on. Make it easy for your customers. Before you hit send, assign specific links and double check them. It’s also not a good idea to use pictures of products you no longer have available on your site in your email.

3. HTML Assumption

Repeat to yourself – Not everyone can read or wants HTML emails. Don’t assume that everyone is going to be able to view the email as you intend it. Is your email just a giant image or group of images? Uh oh. Many email programs block images and if your customer is already unsure of whether or not to read your email, you probably just convinced them to hit the delete button. As Smart Phone usage continues to increase, more and more people are reading their emails on their phones but the majority are still limited to text based emails. Make sure your email is readable. If they have to scroll through a bunch of links in between all the text that is actually important they’re going to delete it. The best way to get around it? As part of your sign up process, ask them if they would prefer HTML or text emails and separate your list accordingly.

4. Deadlines Issues

While it’s a good idea to have a deadline in your email to encourage timely action, be realistic. A common complaint I hear from people is how they hate getting an email for a “Today Only” offer only to realize they’ve received it after the deadline. Depending on several factors such as the size of your email list and your email blast program, it can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days for your emails to be received.

5. Redundancy

Make sure you’re not making it easy for your customers to tune out your emails. Are all your emails virtually identical? Templates can be useful to keep a consistent look and feel to an email so they are consistent with your branding, but if the only thing your swapping out is a few details like the date and subject line, so otherwise it’s virtually the same, your customers will cease to open your emails. You’re not giving them any reason to pay attention and in fact you may cause them to feel like you’re wasting their time. Give your customers a reason to open your email and react.

6. Frequency Issues

How frequent you send emails will depend on a lot of factors, but ensure you’re not getting caught up in the mentality that you have to send them daily. For some companies, a daily email is necessary, but for others a biweekly schedule works better. The important thing to consider is if your email isn’t providing anything useful or relevant, you probably shouldn’t send it. However, the reverse issue also should be considered. Do you send out emails so infrequently that your customers forget they’ve even signed up to receive them?

7. Email Ownership

Do not assume that because you have been given a customer’s email address that you can use it however you want. It’s tempting to cross promote your other products/companies to a customer, but just because you’re not violating CAN-SPAM does not mean it’s a good business practice. If you have multiple newsletters, allow customers to choose what additional emails they would like to receive from you. Taking liberties with a customers email, can cause unintended repercussions. Yes, you may get some increased business, but you may also find yourself blacklisted from customers reporting your emails as SPAM because they’re not aware of why they’re received it.

I have a personal example of this exact thing occurring. I’ve played in some 3 on 3 mini-lacrosse tournaments over the years and as part of their registration, they request an email address. Shortly after, I started receiving a multitude of emails I didn’t want for Rapids games, 3 on 3 soccer tournaments, and a few lacrosse oriented organizations. How do I know for a fact they were related? The same misspelling of my name across all of them. Needless to say, it was just one more factor in them losing my business.

Domains 101: The Basics

Posted on September 30, 2009May 5, 2015 by MD

Premium | Typos | Keyword | TLDs | ccTLDs

What is a Domain?

A domain is the (hopefully) easy to remember address for your site. Essentially it’s what is found between the www and the “dot” that most people think of as a URL or as a website although not entirely correct. A domain is like a plot of land. The land can be developed in a variety of ways such as building a house, a shopping mall, parking lot, farm etc. Domains are very similar. A domain owner can build a website on their plot of vacant property. The website could be a personal blog, an online store, a company website, a parked page, or any other type of site you can think of. Like real estate, domains can be bought and sold with their values differing, depending on a variety of variables.

Types of Domains

Premium

Premium domains are called this because they have high intrinsic value and are therefore worth more in the marketplace. These domains can be words, letters or numbers, but the shorter and more obvious their use, the higher their value. For example, because of their scarcity, 2 number (NN) and 2 letter (LL) .com domains demand a high premium to obtain. 3 letter(LLL) and 3 number (NNN) domains also command a premium, but not nearly as high.

While generic word domains command a premium, some still have a higher value than others based on factors such as the popularity of the word as a keyword and whether or not it can be used as a category killer. As the name suggests, category killers are domains that lay claim to a valuable keyword that often creates a halo effect making the owner appear to be the leader in their industry regardless of validity. These domains are often very valuable because they get a lot of natural or direct type-in traffic.

Vodka.com sold for $3 million, December 20, 2006

Pizza.com sold for 2.6 million, April 7, 2008

Candy.com sold for $3 million, June 4, 2009

Typos

As the name suggests, these are domains that are incorrectly spelled. This isn’t to say that this is always unintentional; some very well known domains are intentionally misspelled because the correctly spelled domain was already taken such as flickr.com. Typos come in many varieties, some of which can be used to your advantage, however, the ones to be most aware of are those that have potential for trademark issues. Regardless of the domain, or its usage, typo domains inherently have a risk to them. This is because of the potential for traffic diversion. For the same reason that trademark typos are popular among a small portion of the domain industry, an intentional typo can have the reverse impact. You may unwittingly be driving traffic to the correctly spelled domain.

Keyword based aka Search Optimized

Search engines can find it difficult to read some long keyword rich domains, which isn’t a surprise when you figure that some domains can be read more than one way i.e. choosespain.com. (Did you see ChoosesPain.com first or the correct version of ChooseSpain.com? You can see more company domain blunders here. ) Keyword domains often have hyphens in them such as Used-Car-Parts.com, which makes them less likely to get type-in traffic and therefore decreases their value on the domain aftermarket, however, they can prove valuable as part of your search engine management strategy.

TLDs and ccTLDs

The term TLD is something you’ll hear a lot in reference to domains, it stands for Top Level Domain and refers to the domain extension or, what comes after the “dot”. For most people, the .com TLD is the best known and most popular, especially in the United States. It typically has the highest resell value. Most of the domains people are familiar with .com, .net, .org (to just name a few) fall under the the gTLD classification. The g stands for general. Registration restrictions vary depending on the TLD. For instance .com is considered open so anyone can register it while .gov is closed and limited to U.S. Governmental entities. June 26, 2008, ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) voted to make a controversial change to the gTLD approval process. You can read more about that here or here But the basic idea is for a starting fee of $185,000, you can get your own gTLD. You can find plenty of discussion both for and against this new proposal, but that’s a topic for another post.

ccTLDs

ccTLD is another term you’ll hear a lot. The cc stands for Country Code and refers to domains that are country specific such as .co.uk (United Kingdom), .ca (Canada), and .ie (Ireland). New ccTLDs are frequently being introduced and like gTLDs, restrictions vary. Two of the best known ccTLDs .me (Montenegro) and .tv (Tuvalu) are often mistakenly thought of as gTLDs. Although .com is most common in the United States, this is not the case everywhere and so in some cases such as in the United Kingdom, going with a ccTLD is a smarter choice. While ccTLDs can be very useful, there is also a serious potential risk in investing in a ccTLD. Because each country sets the requirements for their ccTLD, there is the potential for a domain to be taken away from you without compensation or warning.

You can see a full list of TLDs and ccTLDs on Wikipedia here.

My intent is to turn this topic into several posts so please let me know if any particular subject is of interest to you. I gave a presentation in June with Victor Pitts of Moniker covering some of these basics as well as some other topics I hope to be covering. Here are my slides from the presentation and here is the audio (which also contains Victor’s presentation.)

Is Social Media Right for Your Business?

Posted on September 25, 2009May 5, 2015 by MD

Right now, there’s a lot of talk about social media. How great it is and how much it’s changing everything from how we interact to how we do business. It’s true, social media is impacting everything from the way we communicate to the way we do business. But, this doesn’t mean it’s the right strategic choice for every business. It’s hard not to get caught up in the excitement of a shiny new toy, but before your company jumps into using social media (assuming it hasn’t already), here are some things to think about.

What are your goals? What do want to get out of it?

This is the first area you should really spend some time on. After all, how can you expect to see results or benefits from using social media if you really don’t know why you’re using it in the first place? Knowing what you want to achieve from using social media will not only impact how you use social media, it will also help drive your selection of social media platforms. Your goals can be revenue based such as increasing sales by 2%, or more general such as increasing brand awareness or interact with your customers in a more personal way. The how and why you want to use social media will impact on all of your decisions regarding your social media strategy.

What social media platforms do you want to use?

Once you’ve determined why you want social media in your marketing strategy, you need to consider what social media platforms you want to use. Just because Facebook and Twitter are getting a lot of press right now doesn’t mean they’ll always be top dog nor that those are automatically the platforms you should choose. This is a very important area to consider simply because of the economics of time. If you choose too many social networks, not only are you spreading yourself too thin, you’re going to be spending too much of your time just trying to manage them all. This will result in plenty of frustration because you won’t see as much benefit from your efforts and therein you’re unlikely to reach your goals whereas a targeted approach across a few platforms is more likely to be successful.

Do not just give this step just a cursory approach. Take the time to really analyze the benefits and challenges you might face with each platform. For example, Twitter is useful because it allows for real time results, but you’re limited to 140 characters per post, and because it’s a very active environment, there’s a lot of noise which increases the likelihood that your message may not be seen.

Take into consideration how you want to use social media, and what you hope to accomplish by using it. Do you want to share videos or pictures? Do you want to promote limited time offers? The platform you choose will dictate what you can or can’t do with it. Look at the tools available for the various social networks to make it easier for you. For example, Ping.fm allows you to update several social networks all at the same time. If you only want to link Twitter and Facebook/MySpace it’s possible. However, anytime you consider using tools that either automate your posts or post the same information across several platforms, you will want to consider your audience. The same message might not work on every platform, and depending on what your goals are, automation may not be the best choice.

Are your customers there?

While this might seem like an obvious question, you’d be surprised at how many people don’t bother to ask it. While some consumers have embraced social media with open arms, others have been very resistant. Some platforms attract an older demographic, some a younger, others are male or female dominant. Although this is a necessary question to answer, it’s also one of the most difficult. How much do you know about your customers? You might be surprised at how little many companies know.

Analyzing your database may provide you with enough information to make educated guesses but it might not provide you with all the answers. Some information can be gleaned by analyzing your customer database against data appends, however, this can be costly and still may not provide you with the information you need to make a decision in your social media strategy or choice of platforms. Don’t let lack of customer information discourage you though because there are other methods you can use if your database isn’t as useful as you would like.

For example, if a large portion of your customers are in China, you would want to consider Qzone, a very large Chinese social media site. Many social networks can provide you with information on their user base, so be sure to look at it to help with your decisions. Another great way to find out if your customers are using a social network is to search the site for mentions of your company or products. If people are talking about you on the site, then you probably have current/potential/former customers there. It’s not infallible nor the only site that does what it does, but socialmention.com can be useful for searching out mentions of your company and products across the internet. It’s kind of like a Google for the social web.

Is your competition there?

Probably the easiest way to figure this out is by searching the sites for your competition and their products. Your results won’t necessarily give you black and white answers but they will provide you with plenty to consider. Just because your competition has a presence on a site doesn’t mean they’re using the site effectively, nor that you should have a presence there. If you discover your competition is on a social network, look at how active they are and how they use the site. If your competition isn’t there, try and determine if maybe they should be. Your results may show you plenty of opportunity or obstacles. Either way, what you find will aid you in your strategy and platform decisions.

Can you let go?

Letting go is the biggest obstacle most companies face in regards to social media. Although it was written before social media and Web 2.0 were common terms, Alex Wipperfurth’s book Brand Hijack is still very applicable. (It’s one of my favorite marketing books too so I tend to mention it a lot.) Wipperfurth talks a lot about sub-culture and customers impacting a brand’s perception. Essentially, your customers are your biggest advocates for your brand and you have to decide whether you can let them run with it. Truthfully, this is rhetorical because as many companies are discovering, it doesn’t matter how close you fight to keep your brand within your company, customers are going to impact it either positively or negatively. Only time will tell, but from my experience, the most successful brands using social media are those that let their customers run with it and have some fun.

Analyzing Yahoo’s Know Your Mojo

Posted on August 14, 2009May 5, 2015 by MD

To promote their new homepage, Yahoo has released a fun little flash site that analyzes your public tweets and tells you what kind of tweeter you are. Whether or not it’s accurate it is up to debate, but it is some simple fun. You can check it out here.

While this has the potential to go viral, the bigger question remains….is it effective?

First up is the home page:

I think Yahoo did a good job with the landing page. It’s not overly cluttered with graphics or text and is very easy to figure out what to do. Plus it’s simple. You enter your user name and click the “Gimme Mojo”. They don’t require you to register, nor that you have a Yahoo account to use it. This is good because more people will play with it and tell their friends because there is a very low involvement factor.

I also like how they’ve incorporated the Yahoo purple, and have the Yahoo name twice, one in conjunction with advertising the new Yahoo home page. As a user, I appreciate how unobtrusive their logos are, however, the page is definitely designed so that your attention is immediately drawn to the center making it very easy to overlook Yahoo’s involvement completely.

Next we’ll look at the results page:

Again, we have the Yahoo purple and the same size & placement for the logos as on the home page. On the left, you get a cute description of your tweeting style. As you can see, I’m a Name Dropper. On the right side, Yahoo offers suggestions for websites you can add to their new home page that might suit your mojo style. Is this effective? I think it could be very hit or miss. If their suggestions really are a good fit for you, then there’s a good chance you’ll check out their new homepage. If not, you may be less likely. However, here, I know I am already slightly biased. I might be in the minority, but I don’t use MSN, Yahoo or Google as an all encompassing home page. I would be very interested ot hear what others think on this.

The Share Mojo button is nicely prominent, however, in my opinion, should have been larger than the try another username button. When you click on it, this is what you get:

Yahoo makes it very easy for people to share this on either Twitter or Facebook with the message short and to the point with a personalized bit.ly link. I especially like the bit.ly link. Not only are they tracking the traffic directly from it, they’re making it possible for others to go to the bit.ly site and see how much it’s been clicked on. (As of this post, it was currently at 15,117 Total Clicks, mostly from the U.S.) You can also see who’s tweeting about it using the link. Want to check out the stats? Click here or put http://bit.ly/knowmojo+ into your browser.

Finally, After you’ve received your result, Yahoo makes it easy to see what the other mojo types are, and what they mean. The only thing I don’t like about this page is it’s inaccessible directly. Most people won’t want to go back through it to figure out what their friend’s mojo results mean.

Overall, I think this is a fun promotion by Yahoo, but don’t expect it to last more than a few days. It definitely has the potential to go viral, but whether or not it will help their new home page is yet to be seen.

What do you think? Is Yahoo’s Know Your Mojo promotion effective for their new homepage?