Archive for: November, 2009

Tucows CEO on the Sad State of Canadian Broadband

Tucows President and CEO, Elliot Noss appeared on Business News Network’s (BNN) “After Hours” program here in Canada yesterday to followup on his comments made recently on the Tucows Inc. website.

In that post, which is definitely worth a few minutes of your time for a full read, Elliot called out Canadian broadband providers as lagging behind much of the rest of the world when it comes to providing affordable, fast, and reliable broadband Internet access:

“In my role at Tucows I have the pleasure of traveling all over the world and having customers who are service providers all over the world. We are always discussing access markets. I could bore you with story after story but very few countries have slower, more expensive access offering than us in Canada. A fantastic study done for the FCC by the Berkman Center for Internet Studies at Harvard is just the most recent to confirm the sad state of broadband in Canada.”

Click here to view the clip at the BNN website.

Three Strategies to Improve Your Transfers-In

We were playing around with domain transfer-in data and we discovered this number. 2.4%. Across the OpenSRS network, this is the average ratio of domain transfers-in for a year to domains under management (at the end of that year). It’s an indication of the “fair share” of transfers-in you should be getting based on the size of your business. I strongly encourage you to figure out your ratio (using the last calendar year, the past twelve months or any recent twelve months) and see how it compares to our average.

If your ratio is below 2.4%, we have some suggestions on how you can improve it. The images you see below are all from Web sites. Web sites just give us the cleanest comparison across businesses. However, success might come through email promotions, outbound sales, account management, support and other tactics. The winning tactics all seem to support the following three strategies.

1. Ask for it.

This is sort of the number one rule of sales (and dating in junior high school). You’re not going to get anything if you don’t go for it. Make it very clear that transfers-in is a service you provide. Some integrate it boldly into their domain name purchase path…

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…others do more of a presumptive sell on the Hosting path. (“If you want our hosting and you have a domain name, well then you’re gonna wanna be bringin’ it with you.”)

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2. Don’t forget the value proposition.

There is some pain involved in a domain name transfer. Customers need to know why they’re doing it. That could be your everyday great service, your every day great prices, the convenience of domain, hosting and other services in one place or a special offer. But there should always be some clear, compelling benefits.

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3. Hold her hand.

(Another best practice in junior high school. Man, why didn’t I do better in junior high school?!) Help make a potentially painful process as easy as possible. We all know there is a lot beyond your control when it comes to transfers-in. But you can explain the process well and you can offer some valuable support along the way.

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Consider all the product development in your pipeline and all the costs per acquisition in your marketing plan. Transfers-in could be an easy win. It is additional revenue from customers you already have or prospects you have already driven to your front door. And it might take just some well-placed messages to earn your fair share.

The Registries: .TV

Video content is the future: “If it moves, put it on .tv.” The .tv registry provider is VeriSign. They just relaunched the ccTLD with great tools to help you and your customers. The numbers speak volumes: every minute 20 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube. In the US, 80% of Internet users watch online video at least once a month. We are a culture embracing online media.

.tv is the preferred destination for video, ?lm, animation, user-generated content and playable media of all kinds. It’s also a great choice for product demonstrations, how-to videos, keynote addresses, plus training and educational content. Whether you are in the business of creating videos or just use videos in support of your business, a .tv domain name is the natural place for your video content to live. Some of the most prominent .tv sites on the web include: Leo Leporte’s twit.tv, justin.tv , ustream.tv and blip.tv.

When you sign up for the .tv promo (until December 31, 2009), we’ll give you a complete package of .tv marketing materials (.tv logo, icons, animated banner ads and email templates).

Quick Facts:

VeriSign is the Registry provider
It is a TLD that is a statement about who you are. You can tell people to expect video on your web site by choosing a .tv.
.tv is a ccTLD
There are no residency restrictions.
.tv was started by dotTV in 2000.

Available resources:

VeriSign’s Watch.tv site
Watch.TV Blog
Watch.TV FAQs
For more ccTLD context, Check out the VeriSign Domain Name Industry Brief (specifically p. 2 -3 for ccTLDs)
Follow WatchTV on Twitter
Facebook with WatchTV
Watch TV’s YouTube channel
Watch TV research with Delicious bookmarks

Editor’s note: OpenSRS offers 25 different top-level domains (TLDs) for our resellers. This is the 16th post in a series intended to share information about the wide range of TLDs and to introduce you to some of the available resources that the various Registries provide.

Webinar: Overcoming Objections When Selling SSL

Looking to supercharge your SSL sales? Look no further.

One of the things we hear over and over again, is that it’s nearly impossible to sell SSL certificates in the face of companies like GoDaddy who seem to be more interested in moving as many units as possible, at the expense of the bottom line. But it’s simply not true–with the right information and techniques, you can effectively sell SSL by easily countering some common objections customers might have.

2010 is fast approaching and now is the time to start thinking about how to energize your SSL sales. And don’t forget that our GeoTrust $199 Extended Validation (EV) SSL Certificate promo is coming to an end soon as well. End 2009 with a bang and kickstart your SSL sales activities heading into the new year.

Get the Sale!

ssl_guy Bob Angus, Product Marketing Manager, VeriSign, will present “Get the Sale! Overcoming four common objections when selling SSL.” Bob will address the four most common objections that you’ll face when selling SSL certificates, provide you with the information that you need to address each one head on, and help you make the sale.

He’ll cover everything from objections over price, to how to handle questions about technology from customers who may have bought into some common misconceptions about SSL. In short, Bob will arm you with information and tactics that you can use when selling SSL to even the most sceptical of customers.

This is a free event for OpenSRS Resellers.

Details:

REGISTRATION IS FREE
What: Get the Sale! Overcoming four common objections when selling SSL
When: Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 11:00 A.M. EST (16:00 UTC)

OpenSRS.com in Your Language

Regular visitors to the OpenSRS.com website may have noticed a new addition to the bottom of the page this week. We’re experimenting with using Google’s translation service on our site as a way to offer our information in different languages. This is really something of a beta test and we like your help and feedback.

translatewidget We have quite a few people in the company who speak different languages and we’ve been exploring some ways to expand the level of support for our Resellers who speak something other than English.

For example, if you saw us at any of the Parallels EMEA Partner Roadshow eventsv around Europe this past summer, you might have noticed that we had marketing materials in a number of different languages including German, Spanish and French. You may also have noticed a number of blog posts in the Registries series that were translated over the past month or two.

Using Google’s translation service is a way to quickly offer other language versions of our website, including the blog.

What do you think?

We’d love to hear from you–what you think about the quality of the translation that Google is providing for the website? Is it understandable in other languages? Do you think it’s a useful tool?

Drop us a line in the comments here on the blog. If possible, include the language or languages you looked at so we can evaluate which ones the translations might work for and which ones are less than ideal.