Posts by Michael Goldstein

Hi.  We made a really exciting hire to the OpenSRS team last week.  Here was the email introducing him internally…

Some of you might be wondering about the guy with the goatee asking all the questions.  I probably should have sent this out sooner…

That’s Ben!  Ben is the newest member of our marketing team.  His job will be to energize and expand the OpenSRS community.  Energize means fostering lively, productive conversations about our services, our resellers’ services, our industry and the Internet.  It means generating a steady flow of feedback we can use to improve and news about the things we are doing to improve.  Expand means to growing the circle of people in that conversation beyond our current resellers to potential resellers and anyone else who might have an interest in our services.

And he’s the right guy to do it.  First, he has helped build, sell and manage the sort of services we offer and our resellers offer.  Ben has been a part of the webhost, e-mail, broadband access and VoIP service provider community for more than 15 years.  He was the co-founder of HIP Communications, a national Voice over IP service provider. He’s also held senior positions with wholesale webhost InQuent Technologies (now part of Network Solutions) and a number of Ontario-based Internet service providers and CLECs.  Second, he is naturally engaging.  Check out his blog at www.benlucier.ca.  Talk to him.  He is curious, empathetic, intelligent, creative and entertaining.  Finally, Ben is an OpenSRS sort of guy.  Throughout his career, he has always focused on customer service and relationships.

We’re really excited about the role and the guy.  (We’re also working on a job title that befits the role and the guy.)  Please welcome Ben and take the time to teach him something.

So Ben is here for you, our reseller community.  Please welcome him and please engage him.  Tell him what you’d like to hear from us, suggest ways for us to hear more from you, give the poor guy a title.  He is tweeting @opensrsben.  His email is blucier@tucows.com.

Hi, I am Michael Goldstein, the new VP of Marketing at Tucows.  This is actually an exciting return to Tucows for me.  I was here 10 years ago, first promoting the software collection, then launching OpenSRS.  I left soon after we hit 2 million domains under management.  (I gave away two cows at ISPCon in San Jose to celebrate the occasion.)  I since spent a few years on the retail side of domain names and Web hosting at Register.com and then several years at ad agency Ogilvy & Mather, managing campaigns for TD Ameritrade, Doubleclick, GlaxoSmithKline and Kraft Foods.  From Web hosting to breakfast cereal and back again.

My goal here now is to do a lot of what I think we did quite well 10 years ago.  I want to inspire and foster conversations.  I want to learn from you about how we can improve our services.  I want to offer you thoughts, observations, customer insights, data, tactics, anything I can to help you grow your businesses.  (I’ll be spending part of my time experimenting with our Hover business, largely in hopes of sharing any successes.)  I would even love to get you swapping more ideas among yourselves.   Of course, I also want to get us some more resellers.  Toward that end, I figure I need to do all the above really well and then inspire and foster conversations between you and our prospects.

I am really happy to back.  (I suppose I should mention that I have also crossed a border, from New York to Toronto, to come here.  It’s a big career move and a big life change, for me and my family.)  My email address is mgoldstein@tucows.com.   Please email me anytime with thoughts about your businesses, OpenSRS, marketing, the good old days, the future, New York, Toronto, breakfast cereal or anything else on your mind.

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…

…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.”)

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.

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.

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.