GoDaddy

In an effort to combat phishing emails, GoDaddy has added the registrant’s name to the subject line of renewal emails that are sent to customers. Instead of an email with a subject of “Your GoDaddy Renewal Notice,” the emails now say “John Doe: Your GoDaddy Renewal Notice.”

In addition to the subject line having the registrant’s name included, the salutation in the email also includes the registrant’s name. The company previously sent out emails that started “Dear Valued GoDaddy Customer,” which is more easy for a hacker to spoof in bulk, untargeted emails sent to thousands of email addresses.

I think this is a smart move, but the company should make

I was going through my spam email folder this morning to see if Gmail inadvertently marked legitimate email as spam, and I wanted to warn you about something that appears to be another GoDaddy phishing attempt masking as a discount offer. You’ll recall that last month there was a GoDaddy Whois verification phishing email  that went around.

There were five things that indicated to me that this was not a real GoDaddy email:

GoDaddy had two Super Bowl commercials this year, and the one that struck more of a chord for me was the commercial featuring a new spokesperson for the company, Gwen, an engineer who quit her job during the Super Bowl commercial.

There are several things I liked about this commercial, and I also want to share why the commercial resonated with me:

According to the backstory I read, Gwen

GoDaddy CEO Blake Irving was interviewed on CNBC this morning to discuss the 2014 GoDaddy Super Bowl commercial and how the company’s strategy has shifted over this last year. Although the company probably won’t make news for having a risque Super Bowl commerical this year, it has been making news because of the dramatic shift in its Super Bowl ad strategy.

There have been many people questioning the new campaign, and I think Irving answers the question about why GoDaddy is no longer focusing on its sexy commercials: “when you have 80% brand recognition, you really need to describe what you do to our customers. We don’t need to get attention anymore. we need to have folks understand what we do and who we do it for.” I think this is a very good point. Gone are the days that GoDaddy was known primarily for its provocative Super Bowl commercials, and now that people know the GoDaddy brand, it’s time to explain what the company does and how it can help small business owners.

I think this is a good explanation and it certainly makes sense. We’ll soon learn if this was the right strategy for the company.

Here’s the video of the CNBC segment with Blake Irving: