Viacom Buys RallytoRestoreSanity.com to Support Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity

Elliot Silver
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Jon StewartWill Jon Stewart of The Daily Show really hold a “Rally to Restore Sanity” event on the Washington Mall at the end of October? Will Stephen Colbert follow suit with his “March to Keep Fear Alive?” These two comedic talk show hosts announced plans for their respective rallies, and if the domain registrations are any indication, Stewart’s Rally may actually happen.

According to the Whois record for RallytoRestoreSanity.com, Viacom registered this domain name on September 9, 2010. It’s a smart move, because many companies these days seem content to rely on Twitter and/or Facebook urls for marketing and promotions. Stewart does have both Twitter and Facebook pages locked down, but this domain name with a single page website will be the third prong in a marketing campaign.

On the other hand, it does not appear to me that Viacom secured the MarchtoKeepFearAlive.com domain name. In fact, it appears to be registered to someone named Vinh  Pham, and the domain name was just registered on September 16, 2010, the day the show aired. One would think if they would have purchased both domain names at the same time.

On the MarchtoKeepFearAlive.com one page website, there is a link to the “Restoring Truthiness” campaign fundraiser that is hosted on the DonorsChoose.org website. It is a bit confusing and misleading though, especially if the registrant is unrelated to Viacom.

You can see more CNN coverage of the announcements in the video   below”

Corn Refiners Association Knows What’s Important When it Comes to Rebranding

Elliot Silver
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There’s an interesting article in the New York Times today about the Corn Refiners Association’s attempt to rebrand the high-fructose corn syrup ingredient that’s apparently earned the scorn and concern of health conscience consumers.

If you’ve ever read the label of just about any type of processed food, you’ve probably seen high-fructose corn syrup close to the top of the ingredient list. I don’t know much about this product, but according to the article and some research published by a market research firm, “about 58 percent of Americans say they are concerned that high-fructose corn syrup poses a health risk.”

I guess in an effort to change perceptions of this ingredient, the Corn Refiners Association has chosen to refer to this ingredient as “Corn Sugar.” The organization smartly bought the corresponding CornSugar.com domain name, and they have information about it on the website.

Perhaps as a result of owning the exact match keyword domain name, CornSugar.com ranks in the top 10 in Google for the “corn sugar” search, despite the fact that the domain name has only been owned by the organization since June of 2010. For some reason, the registration is showing a creation date of June 2010, but if you look at its Whois History, you can see this domain name was previously owned by Buy Domains as recently as May 2010.

Smart move by the CRA to own the brand in .com (.net and .org, too).

NFL Does it Right With Ticket Exchange

Elliot Silver
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TicketmasterI’ve written three different articles about this topic before, criticizing large companies for advertising either Twitter or Facebook urls in lieu of their own brand. For instance, I think it’s dumb for Best Buy to advertise Twitter.com/twelpforce, despite having control over that Twitter handle.

In this case, I want to give props to the NFL for the way they are advertising the new Ticket Exchange program.   During the Saints vs. Vikings game Thursday evening, the first regular season NFL game of the year, the NFL advertised the url for the Ticket Exchange program, directing visitors to NFL.com/TicketExchange.   Instead of landing on the NFL’s website, visitors are immediately directed to TicketExchangeByTicketmaster.com, a website owned by ticketing company, Ticketmaster.

Not only is the NFL url easier for people to remember than the long Ticketmaster url, the NFL can also control this traffic. They should be able to track this traffic, and they are building the NFL brand rather than Ticketmaster’s brand.

The only bad thing is that the NFL does not seem to own NFLTicketExchange.com. I am not sure if this is a result of too much traffic or if the site isn’t set up, but when I visited that website, my browser was unable to connect to it. That domain name was registered back in 2004.

Kudos to the NFL for some smart marketing.

Confirmed: MLB Acquires Angels.com

Elliot Silver
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8

The Angels.com domain name has been purchased by Major League Baseball, and Angels.com now redirects to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim website. The domain name was purchased at the end of August for $200,000 at a Sedo auction.

In my opinion, this was a smart acquisition for the baseball team, and it was a smart sale for the owner, who hasn’t been able to monetize the traffic that was presumably mostly looking for tickets, baseball gear, and other baseball related products. In 2007, Major League Baseball filed a UDRP for Angels.com, but they lost the decision. According to an article written by Andrew, the team was offered the opportunity to purchase the domain name back then for around $300,000.

As you can see from a prior post about sports team domain name, most professional sports teams (and leagues) understand the value of owning the team .com domain name. (Big exception: Dallas Cowboys who still down’t own Cowboys.com).

According to the most recent Whois update, the domain name is owned by MLB Advanced Media, LP, and the domain name is registered at Corporation Service Company.

Huffington Post Spotlight on .CO Registry and Juan Calle

Elliot Silver
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.CO Registry Founders ProgramThere was a nice article on the Huffington Post about Juan Calle and the .CO Registry. Aside from the mildly insulting comment that seems to equate domain parking with cybersquatting, it’s a pretty good article about the Registry and its marketing efforts, which have been led by Calle, Lori Anne Wardi, their internal marketing team, and the external advertising team at the Pappas Group.

The article discusses how Calle and his company went up against a registry powerhouse to get the rights to administer the .CO Registry and came out on top. Additionally, the Registry’s efforts to combat cybersquatting are also mentioned in the article. You can read a bit about those efforts in a previously written article.

One thing the article only briefly mentions is Calle’s previous Internet success. One of Calle’s companies, Straat Investments, owns and operates websites like ParisHotels.com, MiamiHotels.com, LondonHotels.com, and many other great cityHotels.com domain names through its Federated Travel brand.

Congrats to Calle and his hard working team at the CO Registry. This has been a hell of a year for him, and in my opinion, he deserves the TRAFFIC Domainer of the Year award.

Good Internet Marketing: Email Newsletter

Elliot Silver
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Waaaay back in graduate school for direct marketing (circa 2003), I learned about the importance of connecting with customers and clients. One of the easiest and best ways to do this is the email marketing newsletter, and I use Constant Contact for that after using their free trial. I want to share a recent example of good direct marketing via newsletter to give you a reminder about how well this works.

On DogWalker.com, I have over 1,100 registered accounts, with around 25% of them having paid listings.   This might seem like a good sales/close rate, but I believe if dog walkers take the time to register on the site, they probably have an interest in signing up for a listing, but I just need to convince them to spend the money.

After 8+ months of being live, I decided to send out the first newsletter a couple of days ago (see screenshot below). The newsletter discussed the current traffic levels on site, the two local marketing efforts done in the last month, and some of the Internet marketing efforts. I also listed the top city searches the site received in the last 30 days, which I think was smart because people can cross-check that list with the number of listings to determine whether their listing will stand out.

Here are the results of the effort so far:

  • Open rate: 28%
  • Opt out rate: 1%
  • Bounce rate: 4%
  • New listings created: 4

All in all, the open rate was pretty strong, especially for the summer. Most importantly though, it netted $200 in revenue, yielded very few complaints, and it opened the door for further communication. It was fairly quick to set up using Constant Contact, and I know they will help you if you run into trouble with the design (my Dad did it for his store and they helped him set up his newsletter a couple of months ago).

If you run a website with subscribers (paid or not), you should have a newsletter. I have the option to use one for my blog, but I generally have too many things going on to create a newsletter for a smaller audience.

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