SSL Webinar Notes and Slides
Last Thursday, Jay Schiavo of VeriSign joined us for a webinar about how to position and sell SSL certificates. Jay has been working with OpenSRS for a long time and has a very good understanding of our business and the needs of resellers like you.
For those who missed the webinar, we had intended to record and archive it for viewing, but thanks to a technical snafu, that recording failed, which absolutely stinks because it was probably the greatest webinar ever given (well, maybe not the greatest). My deepest apologies to those who were counting on that archive.
We do have Jay’s slides available as a PDF download, as well as a package of seven SSL whitepapers that VeriSign has put together for your use in marketing SSL products to your customers. Those whitepapers are brandable by you – all the information on what you need to do is contained in the download.
SSL – For more than eCommerce
Jay made some excellent points during his presentation. He explained the value of SSL from a security perspective, and highlighted some of the use cases for SSL. One of the points he made from a marketing perspective was to make sure that you point out that SSL certificates are applicable for more than just e-commerce sites. Anywhere that there is a login (including forums, blogs, customer portals, wikis) can and should be protected by by an SSL cert.
Three brands, pick two
Jay also broke down how to market the various brands of certs available through OpenSRS. We recently launched new SSL products, including SSL certs from VeriSign, thawte and GeoTrust.
Jay pointed out that it’s best to offer two of the three brands – choose between thawte and GeoTrust (for those customers looking for a lower cost cert) and then add VeriSign for those customers looking for that higher end brand.
When choosing between thawte and GeoTrust, it really comes down to a few points. First, if you are already offering GeoTrust, stick with it and just add VeriSign to your mix, if desired. Jay says that thawte has a strong brand presence in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, thanks to its South African corporate heritage. GeoTrust is well known in North America and parts of Asia.
Use and offer EV
Jay also talked about Extended Validation (EV) certs and the importance of both using EV certs for your own sites, where it makes sense, but also about the increasing recognition of the “green bar” that EV facilitates amongst Internet users. The EV cert offers a level of trust to Internet users that is a step above a ‘normal’ domain or organization validated SSL certificate.
We thank all those who attended the webinar, and we hope you found the content useful and applicable for your own business. Thanks also to our friends at VeriSign – and specifically Jay – for putting together such a great presentation.