I want to share a quick but effective tip that may be able to help you find the right person at a company who will be making the decisions on investments and acquisitions, particularly as it pertains to domain names.
For most larger companies, you’ll want to put your domain name in front of the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), Chief Technical Officer (CTO), Vice President of Business Development, or possibly the CEO. Finding the direct contact information can be difficult, especially at larger companies, and emails to central inboxes often go unsent to the right person.
If you would prefer to not use LinkedIn or Facebook but would prefer email (my personal preference), here are a few tips to find a working email address for the right person:
- The management team pages for these people often have emails. Obviously this is the easiest method.
- Historical Whois record may have the email address from when the company was smaller.
- Press release may have the marketing contact email.
- Call the company and ask for the contact information.
- Search Google for the person’s name (in quotes) and email to see if there was ever a forum post or article mentioning that person’s contact information.
- Search Google for “@companyname.com” and email, and see if you can find the naming convention for the company. Send an email to the person using that naming convention.
It’s frustrating to not receive a reply from a company you know should be interested in a domain name you have. The problem could be that you aren’t getting it in front of the right person.
***Important Advice***
Do not send crappy or questionable names to these c-suite executives. You will likely annoy them and  embarrass  yourself. If you find yourself having to explain what a domain name means or why a domain name has value, you probably should not send outbound solicitations like this.
@elliot nice post 🙂
I have tried few things as above …
I had success calling and talking direct to Marketing manager ..
1) When calling / writing make a proper research about the domain that needs to be sold .
2) find who are those company using those keyword/ s
3) How much is the cost for CPC and how many clicks can you expect to get.
4) download the data about the domain, about how many uv it gets
5) how many search are made
6) how many companies uses those kw
7) why this domain makes worth buying
8) how much the company / business could save in 12 month.
This are the things I have done for my last 3 sales through phone / face2face approach…
I am not here to say this the best way but to let new user domainers understand if they choose to make a direct call and then face 2 face … This tips could be helpful to get the deal through..
How about sending the company a tweet?
@Abdu – sending a tweet can work – but again, only if the right person sees it. I did try sending a tweet to an exec once. It ended in a $8.5k sale.
Congratulations James!
Thanks for sharing Elliot!
I would also recommend for company LinkedIn profile. Most of the time it will also have company management names. So you would have at least the name when cold calling.
I have been trying to contact AT&T regarding a domain name (.com) which is similar to an app being launched by them. I tried Linkedin and FB, but to no use.
Try adding a chrome extension called Rapportive for Gmail. Works brilliantly for finding info about any email address. It fetches connections from multiple social networks and you can even try permutations of @companyname.com emails to find out who’s email it is too.
If nothing else, you can use it to find more info about the person who just sent you an offer on your domain.
So much here going unsaid. You can reach anyone with simple but expensive processes. It’s called “professional contact databases”.
You can go crazy sending out email to the right person at a major corporation that has the ability to make the decision to buy your domains. Problem is, they might not be the “right person”, and every major corporation has a “breakwater” up to even ten levels before you reach the person you want, and most likely, you’ll never reach them. Do you have an email service that lets you know who opened up your email or if it was even opened at all? That’s the only way to tell whether sending emails to people you find on the internet who are who they say they are, but it doesn’t say THEY will be the person opening your email.
The domain biggies use this other system, they just don’t want you to do it, because it clogs up their abilities to sell their tens of thousands of premium domains to the right people, who they’ve contacted through expensive processes. Too much “noise” hurts all of us when attempting to reach the real players whose companies would benefit from purchasing our domains.
Elliot,
Have you used Data.com for leads?
Stephen,
I used Toutapp.com for email confirmation. It provides some useful information but I thought it was overprice for the service. You many find it useful.
Rafael
@Rafael,
Thanks for the tip, Rafael. There are secrets the big corporate domain “auction houses” and listing services they use to sell THEIR domains, but not yours. I know which companies they use to gain their advantage over the rest of the domain investors in the field. They don’t want 1000 domain investors bombarding these special ‘contacts’ with their domain offers, even if a small investor has a better domain to sell, at a better price.
Hey, capitalism is king! Dirty and slightly unethical gameplay is to be expected, because information advantage is just like “oil, electric, and railroad” advantage was used to create monopolies in the 19th century, and make five main rich families so rich they controlled the growth of the country based on their pricing because they knew they controlled the goods Americans wanted. The same game is played out today, because there are certain companies who only want to “WIN” as opposed to helping their customers, or leaving an advantage in an open door policy in fair competition.
It’s not hard to find out which companies fall into this camp. Just do your research, use your mind, focus on logic in how their thinking helps them control YOU.
This is a fact. It’s a hard thing to write about on a blog that makes money promoting these same companies. That’s a whole other conversation.