I don’t recall having much success selling a domain name to someone who had inquired about it months or years prior. Perhaps because of this lack of success, I haven’t really pursued old leads. Perhaps it’s time I change my thinking about this.
I recently received an email from a DomainNameSales.com broker in response to an older inquiry I made, and I want to share it with you because I think it is well done.
At least a couple of years ago, I inquired about DogSitter.com, a domain name owned by Frank Schilling’s Name Administration (sister company of DomainNameSales.com and Uniregistry). I wasn’t interested in buying the domain name at the offer price, but the company still has my lead on file and brokers email me about the name every once in awhile. I recently received this animated holiday-themed follow up, and I thought it was timely.
I reached out to Jeff Gabriel, Vice President of Sales at DomainNameSales.com, and I asked him to share some details about the template and campaign. He let me know that it is used by DNS brokers to follow up on leads that they are managing. The template(s) are not available directly to DNS customers who self-broker, but leads that are given to DNS brokers by clients may be sent this or similar templates.
Jeff offered some details about email campaigns like this:
“The goal of these campaigns is to get a response from business that is not currently responsive to the typical emails and or phone calls we are making to buyers. You would be surprised how many opportunities get new life breathed back into them from changing the approach. We have not had any complaints from our customers.”
Jeff also told me that DNS email campaigns like this “have equated to millions of dollars in sales since we started them a few years ago.”
It seems that following up on old leads is important and should be done by everyone. I am not sure if an email like the one above was used on the Drink.com sale, but I understand that deal was closed after an inquiry was made a while back.
I have spent more time trying to close a deal close to when an offer was submitted rather than at a later date. Based on what Jeff told me, I think it would be wise to go through some of my older leads that came in for domain names I still own and try to see if a deal can be struck. I understand DNS has other themed templates in the works, and I am going to go through some of my older leads and discuss them with DNS to see if they would be good candidates for a follow up.
Elliot,
Thank you for another great article. We appreciate it.
This current campaign has been very successful for us, and has us on track for our best December in our history. Luckily we have a great team of designers and developers to make this a reality and a top sales team to close the renewed opportunities.
Happy Holidays!
Jeffrey Gabriel
Haven’t you turned on “Old Lead Management” option which automatically forwards all your inactive leads for the past 30 up to 120 days and DNS brokers will work on them. It works for me real great.
How about you Elliot?
Hey Elliot .
That’s a nice looking website in my opinion. Good concept and strategy.
I agree that following up with leads who were interested is crucially important because this holds not only true to the domain industry but with lots of markets that deal with leads/sales.
I personally was able to sell a domain name via GodAddy offer/make offer from a person who had put in an offer for the domain 4 months prior. I thought, what the heck let me see if I send them another counter 4 months later if their still interested.
They were!
Worked on a price, agreed and made the sale.
Following up is very important.
Nice article Elliot.
-Omar