Sweetmantra: Internet Marketing Advice

A Truly Foolish Domain Name

In honour of April Fools' Day, I thought I'd share with you one of the most foolish domain names I've come across so far this year.

I discovered this little gem when I was driving around one rainy night in Los Angeles. While stopped at a red light, I looked up and saw a large billboard ad for a vehicle donation charity.

I couldn't believe what I saw...

(Apologies in advance; because of the rain my photos are not great.)

It's a bit hard to make out, but according to this billboard the domain name for this organization is:

kars-4-kids.org

That's right, "kars" with a "k", plus not just one but TWO dashes, and all ending in a .org domain extension.

Good luck trying to remember this domain name!

Thankfully, I had a camera with me to record the domain name, so when I got back to my computer I typed in www.kars-4-kids.org.

Guess what? The billboard got it wrong!

kars-4-kids.org is not owned by the organization, and is in fact just a parked domain.

The organization can actually be found at kars4kids.org (without the dashes).

Somebody please fire the genius who thought it would be a great idea to add a few dashes to the domain name and then spend who knows how much plastering it on billboards all over the country.

But it gets even better, or worse, depending on how you look at it...

What if you didn't happen to have a photo of the billboard and had to rely on memory? Hey, it could happen.

Say, for instance, when you next found yourself at a computer you typed in carsforkids.org.

Turns out that carsforkids.org takes you to a different organization doing roughly the same thing: charitable donations of cars for kids!

I kid you not.

The Serious Business of Funny Email

It's no secret that using humour is a powerful marketing strategy that marketers can use to attract and acquire new customers. Every day we're likely to see a whole raft of 'funny' ads, the collective effort of creative teams who have worked very hard to come up with them.

I'm sure that you have, at least once in your life, been attracted to the products or services of a company because their marketing material made you laugh. (The same can be said of marketing material that is intended to make you cry, but that's another blog post...)

But what about using humour to retain customers? Which companies are making their current customers laugh for all the right reasons?

A little company called CD Baby is.

Until a few weeks ago I had never even heard of CD Baby. I stumbled across them while trying to find out where to purchase the debut CD from a Canadian band I admire, Delhi 2 Dublin. It turned out that their CD was available at CD Baby, an online music retailer that calls itself "the little store with the best new independent music."

"Cool," I thought to myself. I quickly found and ordered the CD on CD Baby's Website, and then promptly moved on to the next item on my to do list.

The next day, I got an email from CD Baby confirming that my CD had been shipped. This was no ordinary email, however. While most e-tailers send confirmation emails to customers once a product has been shipped - which is a best practice - this was the funniest and most memorable order confirmation email I have ever received.

Here's an excerpt:

"Your CDs have been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow...

Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CDs into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.

We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved "Bon Voyage!" to your package..."

So as not to spoil the surprise should you ever become a customer of CD Baby and receive one of these emails, I have left out some of the email's content.

Not only did I laugh out loud when I read this email, but I immediately showed it to my wife (who was sitting near me at the time). "Wow. That makes me want to buy from them," she said. I couldn't agree more.

Thanks to the clever use of humour in their order confirmation email, CD Baby not only forged a tighter bond with me as one of their current customers, but they also motivated me to share my positive experience with prospective customers - first my wife, and now you.

And that's nothing to laugh at.

The $165,990 Domain Name Mistake

Last month, I watched with fascination and amazement as the domain name shoppers.com expired and was then purchased at auction on Pool.com.

While it was impressive what the expired domain name sold for - $166,000 (USD) - what really blew me away was that the original registrant (owner) of this domain name let it expire. That's right, instead of paying a mere $10-20 to renew this terrific generic domain name, they somehow let the domain expire and ultimately end up in the hands of one of the domain dropcatching services (Pool.com), who then put the name up for auction.

What was the original registrant of this domain name thinking? How the heck did they let this domain name expire? And what must it be like for them to discover after the fact that a domain name they could have renewed for a few dollars sold for a small fortune?

As far as I can tell, the expiry and subsequent purchase of this expired name followed the proper channels - nothing shady took place - but I am still very curious to know how anyone could let such an amazing name slip through their hands. (I don't know who the new owners of shoppers.com are, but the domain redirects to the site of etailer ShoppersChoice.com.)

I think there are some lessons to be learned here for any individual or business that owns a domain name or two.

First of all, for the domain names you intend to hang on to, are you sure you know when the domain names are coming up for renewal? Have you put the renewal date in your calendar to ensure you renew the domains in time?

And if you are planning to NOT renew a domain name, are you aware of the potential value of that domain name on the aftermarket? Rather than let it just drop, have you thought about pro-actively putting the domain name up for sale?

Most people only dream about owning domain names that would sell for six-figures, but that's no excuse for not paying close attention to these valuable assets. Had the original owners of shoppers.com followed this advice, they'd have avoided making a $165,990 mistake.