The letter was sent to 46 existing Epik customers who had purchased .VC registrations during our promo but were not yet using the Epik landing pages ahead of the Monday highlight reel to be distributed to VCs. You can sell full text of the letter here below.
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Good afternoon,
I wanted to reach out on a few points that may help boost your sales performance, and also say congratulations on your great selection of .VC names. Our VC promotion is continuing over and through most of September, so if you want to see our hot lists of key names that have not yet been taken, just let me know. It has over 50,000 names in it, and we are updating it every 24 hours to help investors.
The Danger of Dan
I wanted to first draw your attention to the blocked status of your names on DAN's marketplace. We have been getting more and more complaints of their CEO mass blocking IP ranges of individuals he has arguments with, and even in our offices we no longer have access to buy names on DAN. Given that we are legitimately some of the largest buyers in the world, this should be a cause for concern. There are many key industry people that can no longer even see your names, let alone be able to purchase them. Even today I was impacted for an introduction as the attached block page was all I was able to see.
Ironically I was originally introduced to DAN through their funder, and literally worked to help rewrite some of their sales letters due to the grammatical issues they had. Epik in fact was in the process of buying the company, until they realized the depth of problems that existed behind the scenes. While their client platform is easy to use, they have been having massive problems with fake bidders and security issues. Upon reporting it and asking several times for assistance, they literally blocked those who knew about it from ever seeing names again, out of fear they would show the rest of the industry. So now there are major buyers who can’t even see names listed on Dan, let alone have a chance of actually buying them. They have simply blocked entire IP ranges.
This screenshot attached is how all of your names on Dan now appear to myself and many other investors, and we are by far some of the most active buyers and domain investors in the world. It massively reduces effectiveness, compounded by their part-time staffing and inability to help conduct deal completion due to the unusual hours they maintain. It is part of the reason Epik maintains staffing 24 hours a day 7 days a week. We know that buyers can quickly change their minds, and we work to lock most transactions down within five hours or less including payment. While DAN complains about low value domains on their network, and encourages users to use only BIN so that their staff don’t have to engage with buyers, our team is flipping $20,000 names for $200,000, and creating surprise paydays every day for our customers. We work hard to create added value for our customers - in every way we can.
Landers for the Win
Over the upcoming week, we are preparing to introduce hundreds of the best .VC names to more than 30,000 venture capitalists in our buying network, and I would love to have the ability to include some of your selections in the introductions. I’ve attached our targeting guide, so you can get an idea of how deep in detail we go for our customers to help them boost both visibility and sales.
I would share this video link on setting up custom landing pages, as it is loaded with tips, tricks, and solid insights to help maximize conversion rates. So many domain investors are dumping their traffic into marketplaces that cross-sell against them at every junction, the smartest thing that can be done is to take control of your own representation. Whether that is using one landing style, multiple themes, or setting up individual pages to customize the messaging and visuals. As a domain innovator, you may find many interesting points of value within this short video presentation, to include some key comparisons of best practices against other registrars in the market. The additional value is learning to stack keywords in the description lines that the content editor offers, so that investors can boost their sales and conversions by enhancing organic ranking value to drive new visibility. No other lander in the industry can offer a similar benefit.
We have some excellent visual backgrounds to accompany nearly four hundred subjects, and if you would like me to email over the backgrounds for the venture capital industry, just let me know and I will happily send them over. I would be thrilled to prioritize visibility of your names, as long as they are using Epik landers and we are not at risk for introducing blocked pages.
The Epik Difference
I had wanted to also share examples from our premium agency, as well other key insights that have been guiding our strategic direction. Our CEO Rob Monster has been investing heavily into the integration of a full-service ad agency and public relations firm into Epik. Our objective is to offer customers added marketing and tactical guidance to boost sales, unlike anything else in the industry. I have attached a guide we refer to as the “Epik Difference”, and it showcases the marketing strength being built off a foundation of investments into market data and consumer intelligence. Our objective when it comes to premium names is to offer a “best of both worlds” approach, merging the sophistication of selling rare domain names with real strategic guidance through our ad agency partners to help elevate value recognition. For example, where some may see a $15,000 name, we see the opportunity to pitch and present fortune brands with campaign anchors and turnkey ideas that could drive hundreds of millions of dollars in positive media spend. This is the key difference from a highly insulated domaining sector, and the real and open world of leading brand agencies and major advertising firms. While the name alone may only have a contained value, when combined as an integral part of a critical strategy, anything is possible on the revenue side.
The Value of Accessibility
Lastly I would reaffirm the value of using Epik over every other marketplace and registrar in my experience. One of the most important attributes of Epik, is that our 24/7 support team for securing sales, validating buyers, and authenticating payment, is light years ahead of everyone else. Domaining can be a tough business, as buyers can easily change their minds if a transaction is not closed quickly at the initial point of interest. It is why networks like DAN, Sedo, and even GoDaddy can have payment failures as high as 80%, as the choice to not service sales in the evenings, or to put off transactions attempted over a weekend, ultimately compounds the chance that the buyer may change their mind. It is why Epik focuses on legendary service, provides sales support 7 days a week and 24 hours a day, and ultimately sees most transactions closed and paid out often within less than five hours start to finish. There is no better solution, and as someone who has held 25,000 names personally, the difference is unquestionably night and day. I would also add the incredible added value that Rob and our team can offer daily by providing overwatch on all the lead generation flows. Even in this past couple weeks I’ve watched Rob help convert a $20,000 listing to a $200,000 payday as a client favor, and just this past week we were able to elevate a name that should have been $65,000 tops into a sale of more than $300k. This is part of the reason that dozens of people are active on social media at any time, singing the praises of both Rob Monster and Epik, as most companies have forgotten the value of real hands-on service and care for their customers. We pride ourselves on accessibility, positive action, and never turn domain names into impersonal widgets. We truly love our job, the people we get to help, and the products we sell.
With this in mind, I hope that you will consider fuller use of the Epik landing system, our legendary marketplace, and our great team to add additional value for high level sales negotiations. Whether you start with just your VC names, or would like to consider migration of all your landers to Epik, we are more than happy to assist. For the VC names in the short-term, if you point your DNS to
NS3.Epik.com and
NS4.Epik.com, my team can also help quickly build landers for you, in the event you are pressed for time for our upcoming Venture Capital promotions.
I am very thankful for your time and consideration, and hope you have a brilliant weekend. Thank you again for choosing Epik as your registrar!
Kind regards,
Robert Davis | SVP Strategy & Communications
a: Epik Premium Services | WA | United States
e: [email protected] |
w: www.epik.com
p: +1.815.429.3254 |
c: +1.815.780.0189
Twitter: EpikDotCom |
Facebook: EpikDotCom
I’m 100% I saw your post where you mentioned you had no sales for a few months. And if I’m not mistaken, you’re doing bulk buying using promos with extensions like .pro. The quality is not there IMO. I would not blame DAN or Epik for low sales.
