One of the reasons I first got into domain names was because of the connection between my master’s degree in Direct & Interactive Marketing and generic domain names. Owning a generic domain name makes the job of a direct marketer much easier, especially when the marketing campaign is done via television or radio. With an easy to remember domain name, consumers have less difficulty processing the message, and it’s easier to send them in the right direction.
Even though I am not in the market for a cross or any type of religious jewelry, one direct response commercial from the holiday season I remember is pitching a prayer cross, a cross necklace that contains the Lord’s Prayer in its “secret center stone.” The prayer cross is being sold by IdeaVillage, a direct response marketing company, and its a part of “Montebello Collections.”
Smartly, the company uses the easy to remember generic domain name, PrayerCross.com for its efforts. They could have just as easily decided that they would brand it using MontebelloCollections.com to offer other products from the same collection. However, these marketers are smart and they know consumers are more likely to remember and correctly spell PrayerCross.com than MontebelloCollections.com.
As the holiday season winds down, I see they are still buying remnant airtime and I think about the domain name every time I see the commercial. I do think they should have purchased PrayerCrosses.com as protection, but it’s now owned by Oversee Research and Development, LLC. Incidentally, MontebelloCollections.com is owned by OS Domain Holdings VIII, LLC, with both companies sharing the same address on Flower Street in Los Angeles.
ahh, the name prayercross.com was in the tdnam closeout section back in 2008. I had it on my buy list and asked my wife at the time if it was a good name. She said no and that it had to be prayerbeads.com for it to be correct. Sadly I threw it back in the wild lol. I jumped out of my seat when I saw the infomercial!
It’s hard to predict these things… 🙂
never trust women for mans work of domaining
Don’t blame your wife too much! While one of my areas of domaining interest are religion-related domain names, I would probably have been hesitant about prayercross.com – I would have had exactly the same reaction as your wife!
As you rightly comment, hard to predict_ valuating the potential of a domain name is far from being an exact science! (Or maybe we should invest in… psychic.com for knowing better!)
Informative post, by the way, thanks to Elliot!
I have the domain “pray.to” but have not got around to doing anything with it (after 2 years).
I think it is time to be decisive about it, so if anyone has a project in mind that would work with this domain, please get in touch.