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advice How NOT To Compose Domain Sales Emails

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This morning I received a cold sales email promoting a domain. Was going to send it straight to spam folder but decided it was a good example of mistakes to avoid in domain sales emails. Mistakes that I see in 99% of sales email I receive on a regular basis. It is analyzed in the following article. Your comments are welcome.

Read: How NOT To Compose Domain Sales Emails
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
"WebDomain.Market" :xf.rolleyes:

I don't think they put much effort into this. It's a garbage domain name.

Heck, I can reg :

GetADomain.Name - $14.99

or if I am really broke:

GreatDomainsOn.Sale - $4.99

I'm pretty sure I can find a ton of variants at NameCheap for 48 cents each if all I can do is find change in my couch cushions. :ROFL:

Too many people in the domain biz selling crap....


 
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I agree with you @NYJimbo. That's why I decided to post and analyze the email on our blog. Hope this will serve as education especially to newbies. Even when you have a quality name, if you make the same mistakes you will not get any bites.
 
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That really is particularly bad...
 
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@Criterion811 @NYJimbo @TheDomainsGroup and anyone else, if you like the article, please link to it and hopefully together we can help reduce such spam. Because it gives real domain sellers a bad image.
 
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If I may comment to provide another bad choice of owner of this domain; it seems to redirects to sales page at startbrand.co.uk

As I read through articles at DomainMarketPro, I found the article from exactly one month ago, https://blog.domainmarketpro.com/sell-domains-quickly/ , and one of the advices says:

Do not redirect your domains to 3rd party marketplaces.
This is one of the surest ways to lose potential buyers that are looking for domains like yours. They will land on your domain and will browse away to see what else is available and may completely forget your domain.

Now, as I looked at the sales page at startbrand, I noticed long arrows just above the domain price. I thought at first that arrows might navigate between domains, but it seemed not logical, to offer another domain in plain sight of price of my domain... and it appears they really do it - you just click the arrow, once, twice, several times, and you certainly lost the original domain!

Not a marketplace I would put my domains at... :xf.cool:

2018-08-02 19_45_30-www.webdomain.market - Opera.png
 
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@strugar You are exactly right. That particular marketplace shows that they are not invested in selling 'your' domain. There are other issues I see but that is a separate topic. ;)
 
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If I may comment to provide another bad choice of owner of this domain; it seems to redirects to sales page at startbrand.co.uk

As I read through articles at DomainMarketPro, I found the article from exactly one month ago, https://blog.domainmarketpro.com/sell-domains-quickly/ , and one of the advices says:

Do not redirect your domains to 3rd party marketplaces.
This is one of the surest ways to lose potential buyers that are looking for domains like yours. They will land on your domain and will browse away to see what else is available and may completely forget your domain.

Now, as I looked at the sales page at startbrand, I noticed long arrows just above the domain price. I thought at first that arrows might navigate between domains, but it seemed not logical, to offer another domain in plain sight of price of my domain... and it appears they really do it - you just click the arrow, once, twice, several times, and you certainly lost the original domain!

Not a marketplace I would put my domains at... :xf.cool:

Show attachment 94438
 
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Hi Guys, I am not on here often........ So to read this thread I was amazed by the comments. From a marketing perspective if one owns a domain name and does not have a landing page how will your domain name be found? The services at 'Startband' offer SEO on the page that the domain is forwarded to. There is nothing unprofessional about it. If you upload to all the big boys you will find that your domain will be forwared to them,so, what is the difference. Before commenting, I would strongly advise not to disrespect or devalue my business and any issues you have you should direct them to me first before slandering my company.
 
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This morning I received a cold sales email promoting a domain. Was going to send it straight to spam folder but decided it was a good example of mistakes to avoid in domain sales emails. Mistakes that I see in 99% of sales email I receive on a regular basis. It is analyzed in the following article. Your comments are welcome.

Read: How NOT To Compose Domain Sales Emails
Nice, useful twist, showing what not to do. Mostly obvious stuff to seasoned marketers, but a good primer for those new to the game. Bookmarked, looking forward to reading your other articles when I have more time...
 
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Hi Guys, I am not on here often........ So to read this thread I was amazed by the comments. From a marketing perspective if one owns a domain name and does not have a landing page how will your domain name be found? The services at 'Startband' offer SEO on the page that the domain is forwarded to. There is nothing unprofessional about it. If you upload to all the big boys you will find that your domain will be forwared to them,so, what is the difference. Before commenting, I would strongly advise not to disrespect or devalue my business and any issues you have you should direct them to me first before slandering my company.

Hello, Renata; I'd guess your post refers to my post, so I will try to explain, I'm afraid you didn't understand, I'll put it on my bad English.

Of course, if you intend to sell a domain name, landing page helps a lot, I do agree. And of course, "If you upload to all the big boys you will find that your domain will be forwared to them", I do agree as well.

So, what's the difference. With the "big boys", I see landing page of my domain, and on the bottom there is usually a section along the lines "other domains by this seller", which displays other domains owned by me.

If I had a landing page with you, however, there would be giant arrows in the middle of the page that point towards domain names owned by other sellers.

"From a marketing perspective", for you there is indeed no difference - you want to sell domains, mine or someone else's, never mind.

But for me, it's a huge difference - I want to sell domains as well, but domains that belong to me, not to someone else.

If you don't see the difference, well... not my problem. I didn't devalue or slander your business, I just said such a landing page is completely unacceptable for me and I'd never use it, that's what a public forum is there for.
 
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Hello, Renata; I'd guess your post refers to my post, so I will try to explain, I'm afraid you didn't understand, I'll put it on my bad English.

Of course, if you intend to sell a domain name, landing page helps a lot, I do agree. And of course, "If you upload to all the big boys you will find that your domain will be forwared to them", I do agree as well.

So, what's the difference. With the "big boys", I see landing page of my domain, and on the bottom there is usually a section along the lines "other domains by this seller", which displays other domains owned by me.

If I had a landing page with you, however, there would be giant arrows in the middle of the page that point towards domain names owned by other sellers.

"From a marketing perspective", for you there is indeed no difference - you want to sell domains, mine or someone else's, never mind.

But for me, it's a huge difference - I want to sell domains as well, but domains that belong to me, not to someone else.

If you don't see the difference, well... not my problem. I didn't devalue or slander your business, I just said such a landing page is completely unacceptable for me and I'd never use it, that's what a public forum is there for.
 
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The services at 'Startband' offer SEO on the page that the domain is forwarded to..
Did you mean "StartBrand" ?

BTW - I was not slandering anyone. All I said was that domain was terrible. Nothing about you or your company.
 
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Thank you for taking the time to reply to my message.

All is fair in Love and War!

However I do not understand what you mean by 'arrows'? what arrows are you referring to? I do not have arrows in the middle of nay of my pages please provide screenshots of this if this is the case. I am also a web designer and check all my pages furthermore I manage other peoples domain names not just my own.

Funnily enough by coincidence I have just had a reply from Uniregistry as I have many domains listed there with parking pages and this was their reply to me:

Therefore I am no different to them other than I actually do outbound marketing and do try and help my clients. I do not just wait for people to contact me, I actually do some work........

Kind Regard,
Renata.

UNIREGISTRY EMAIL
DOMAIN BROKERSPosted by CHIEF APP & WEB DEVELOPER Tue, September 25, 2018 14:36:07
UNIREGISTRY EMAIL.

Thanks for reaching out regarding our brokerage platform and in particular if we outbound (find buyers) for your domains.

We do not actively find buyers (outbound) we work on inbound inquiries only, this is for a number of reasons but 3 in particular listed below:

1. We have over 12,000,000 domain names on our marketplace and if our brokers were to start performing outbound on a tiny portion it would dilute the experience for other clients. If we did that on all portfolios we would simply not get anything done, so we specialise in this area and that is why we are leaders in the field.

2. Most of our clients are not looking to liquidate their portfolios so we encourage inquirers to provide qualified offers for their domain names. We sell domains for the highest value possible.

3. This then allows us to state to inquiries we receive that the domains are already in use for parking purposes or held for a future project. By actively selling a domain name, we contradict this strategy.

If you have any further questions, please let me know.
--

Business Development | Uniregistry
 
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Hello, Renata; I'd guess your post refers to my post, so I will try to explain, I'm afraid you didn't understand, I'll put it on my bad English.

Of course, if you intend to sell a domain name, landing page helps a lot, I do agree. And of course, "If you upload to all the big boys you will find that your domain will be forwared to them", I do agree as well.

So, what's the difference. With the "big boys", I see landing page of my domain, and on the bottom there is usually a section along the lines "other domains by this seller", which displays other domains owned by me.

If I had a landing page with you, however, there would be giant arrows in the middle of the page that point towards domain names owned by other sellers.

"From a marketing perspective", for you there is indeed no difference - you want to sell domains, mine or someone else's, never mind.

But for me, it's a huge difference - I want to sell domains as well, but domains that belong to me, not to someone else.

If you don't see the difference, well... not my problem. I didn't devalue or slander your business, I just said such a landing page is completely unacceptable for me and I'd never use it, that's what a public forum is there for.

**********************************************************************************************

I get what you are saying but I keep my sellers private. I do have catagories for the domains though.
 
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Did you mean "StartBrand" ?

BTW - I was not slandering anyone. All I said was that domain was terrible. Nothing about you or your company.
 
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However I do not understand what you mean by 'arrows'? what arrows are you referring to? I do not have arrows in the middle of nay of my pages please provide screenshots of this if this is the case.

Screenshot is provided in my post above, see left and right arrows above caption "In stock".
 
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Yes sorry for the typo not concentrating yes I mean't 'Startbrand' apologies in advance.
 
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No problem, everyone has the right to express an opinion and I do not mind critique as I can only improve to make my services better. I will address the arrows problem with the people that provide me the e-commerce store. Happy Domaining.
 
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Ok thanks but I will still try to improve the store, thanks for the feedback.
 
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Screenshot is provided in my post above, see left and right arrows above caption "In stock".
I will remove the arrows as they do prompt you to go to another domain if you do not wish to go to checkout. This will be rectified thanks for your feedback. Happy Domaining!
 
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Nice, useful twist, showing what not to do. Mostly obvious stuff to seasoned marketers, but a good primer for those new to the game. Bookmarked, looking forward to reading your other articles when I have more time...
This email was not from me or 'Startbrand' it was directly from the seller. I am in the throughs of writing a book and it shows how to write emails. I hope to have it published in the middle of October. It's going to be called ' The Domain Sellers Hanbook'. A link will be found on my website as well as it being sold in all the top Book Stores. Best Wishes Renata.
 
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@strugar You are exactly right. That particular marketplace shows that they are not invested in selling 'your' domain. There are other issues I see but that is a separate topic. ;)
Please read the thread and my responses to everyone.
 
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Please read the thread and my responses to everyone.

Hi Renata. First off, I have to commend you for taking this topic on as you have. It shows that you are committed to your business and believe in customer service. I know it is not easy to address criticisms but in the end it will help your company to grow. Every successful person has to deal with criticism and worse.

I was not going to comment, but you called me out. I hope you take this as creative criticism and not as an attack.

My comment in that quote you posted is from the first impressions I got. From the cold email and then from the landing page on your marketplace. I had a chance to look a little more closely at your marketplace and here are my observations (for the two pennies' they're worth).

The sales portion of the landing page dedicated to the domain for sale is less than 50% of the actual page. I'd say closer to 15 to 20%. The rest is promoting the marketplace itself.

Looking at the url of the landing page, the meta tags, and the content, there is still much to do when it comes to SEO. I get it, it takes time to SEO potentially thousands of domain sales pages if you are doing it 1 by 1. Case in point: https://startbrand.co.uk/Marketplace.html#!/www-accessresponse-com/p/93896655/category=0

Also, you need to vet better what domains you list and from who. If you will have a seller's domain resolving at your marketplace and you agree to do the brokering, you should make sure they don't send spammy sales emails en masse. It makes your marketplace look bad in the process.

I came across this domain on your marketplace accidentally where the description just does not look professional at all. https://startbrand.co.uk/Marketplace.html#!/www-vipmassage-ca/p/99308631/category=25640327 You are targeting the wrong end user for one of the better domains at your marketplace. It sounds too close to x-rated and cheapens your marketplace.

Finally, your pricing is not realistic, especially for the ngTLD's. Don't want to get into it here because we've written plenty on the subject here: https://blog.domainmarketpro.com/tips-appraising-domain-name-prices/

Take it as you will. I wish you success.
 
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