How to Choose a Brandable Domain Name?

So you have decided to take the plunge and bring your business online by creating a website.

Perhaps you will only be using the site for purely informational purposes – or maybe you are planning to create an online storefront.

Whatever the case, you need a domain name for your business and you want to be sure that it is a brandable one.

What is a brandable domain?

A brandable domain is a vanity url or web address that is synonymous with your company's image or brand. It may contain keywords or it may be something totally unrelated to the brand, but memorable just the same.

For example, someone who sells things for children may choose StuffForKids.gdn for their domain name. It tells people what your business is about and it is easy for them to remember, which makes it easier for them to find you.

Alternately, it may just be a single word company name that stands out in people's minds – even if it has nothing to do with what your company is about, such as Yahoo!, Google or Expedia.

So, how do you choose a brandable domain for your business?

Regardless of whether you plan to go the keyword route or the single word logo, the process for choosing a brandable domain name is pretty much the same.

Pick your approach.  – Before you can choose a brandable domain name, you need to decide which approach to take in regards to bringing in traffic. If you want most of your traffic to come from search engines, opt for the keyword route. However, if you want your traffic to come from organic searches just because people remember your name and URL, go for the single word option.

Are you staying local or going global? - If you intent to target a specific geographic market with your brand, you should incorporate that into the domain name you choose. For instance, www.TexasGolf.gdn is an example of a location-targeted brandable domain name. However, if you plan to serve the global market and want to attract global business, leave out the location bit when deciding on your domain name, as it isn't necessary and would have the opposite effect with search engines.

Strive for simplicity. – You want people to be able to find you when they are in the market to buy what you are selling. So keep that in mind when choosing your domain name. No one is going to remember a domain name that is long, creatively spelled, irrelevant, boring or just plain hard to remember. Consumers want simplicity. Give it to them by keeping your domain name short, simple, to the point – but memorable!

Play with your words. – If you are looking for a single word domain name for your brand, chances are you will be disappointed. Those tend to sell as quickly as they become available so you may not find the exact match you are looking for. That is when you have to become creative. Blend two or three words together to create a new word, shorten lengthy ones or use simple acronyms and abbreviations instead.

Escalate Your Brand’s Visibility by Effective Email Marketing Campaign

Are you a company trying to see substantial returns on your investment in marketing medium? Then get ready to reap the benefits of strong email marketing campaign. Because now it’s high time to segment your target client, their needs and better upgrading of transactional emails. The only trick that works well in it is to get smarter in the technologies available today and use them to increase a one-to-one level business communication. 

The arrival of effective and strong electronic mail campaigns has changed the landscape of conventional email practices used to promote the businesses earlier. But how is an email more effective for enriching business communication and sales conversions? And why should businesses increase their email marketing budget? 

Increasing Need of Effective Email Marketing Campaign for Businesses: 

• It’s More Than A Substantial Marketing Technique: Marketing techniques have shifted in the last decade. The core strategies and tactics of businesses are simultaneously paving their new ways in internet marketing campaigns. By offering snippets of advertisements, blogs, sales or donation solicitation and request of business via emails you can steer people towards your business.  
• It’s Ubiquitous and Ever Surging: Emails are again witnessing renaissance since it is a base unit of web which can be a reason to nurture a cohesive relation between peers and target clients in a more diverse way than ever. Increasing use of mobile units opens the gates for checking mails immediately and it’s now the ubiquitous trend that brands should follow.

• Small Investments Leads To Bigger Sales Conversions: Sometimes small budget upgrades can be the sole reason for massive returns. Investing in email designs can radically turn unfamiliar people to prospective clients and can further help in increasing brand loyalty and engagement.
• Expands Your Brand Visibility: Effective email campaigns drives people to your website and considerably helps in improving their perception towards your brand thereby building brand visibility, awareness and strong relationships.
• Cost-Effective and Flexible: It is very much cost-effective as compared to other web marketing techniques and is flexible enough to quickly send hundreds or thousands of email at a time.
• Allows You To Measure The Outcomes Quickly: You can easily monitor your delivery rates, open rates, number of clicks on your emails and hence objectively gauge whether the budget you have cropped for email marketing is delivering you a profitable return or not.

In digital age email marketing have consecutive benefits that cannot be avoided. Nonetheless, the potential of effective email campaigns for marketing is not just about attracting number of clicks, it’s about providing value to our customers, retaining current clients and a way to stay connected with your purchasing base, on which you have to endeavor.

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Why You Need Multiple Domain Names for Your Brand?

Choosing the right domain name for your brand is a tricky process. You want one that perfectly describes your company and is catchy – but is simple enough for people to remember.

Think about it.

How many times have you tried to remember a URL to a website? You know the brand name, but you just couldn't recall whether the domain extension was .com, .net, .gdn or .org?

Consider how much easier it would have been if multiple domain extensions would have taken you to the site you were looking for.

That's what consumers are saying about your brand, too!

They want to find you.

They're trying to find you.

They just need a little help.

Of course, the easier it is to find your brand, the more likely people will find your brand. However, that's not the only benefit of registering multiple domain names for your brand. Here are a few others:

• Own your niche – If you're selling a very specific product and are using a product-related domain name, registering multiple extensions allows you to own your niche, squashing the competition. For example, if you're selling helium balloons and your domain name is heliumballons.com – that's pretty direct and easy to find. But registering additional domains like heliumballons.net, heliumballons.biz or heliumballons.gdn in addition to your main domain will ensure that, no matter which domain extension consumers search for helium balloons, they are going to end up on your website.

• Deter cybercrime – Cybercrimes like typosquatting, rogue sites and counterfeit goods cost businesses millions of dollars each year in lost revenue. Registering multiple domains for your brand keeps cyber thieves from registering your brand name and deceiving unsuspecting consumers.

• Improve search engine rankings – Three out of four consumers begin their search for a product or service online. Most of them will click the first few links that appear in the search engine results. The rest never make it past the first page of results before visiting a site to make their purchase. Having multiple domains for your website improves search engine rankings by making your site more visible to the site crawlers. Having a domain name is directly related to your product, like with heliumballoons.com as mentioned above, also helps with search engine rankings through specific keywords that are exclusive to your brand.

Of course, small to medium sized business owners may think it's silly to register multiple domain names for their website – especially if they don't actually sell products online. The truth is businesses of any size can benefit from multiple domains, whether they have an online storefront or not.

Your competition knows this – but did you?

Does Email Marketing Really Work?

Email marketing is one of the most powerful tools in any online marketing arsenal.

Conversely, it's also one of the most under-utilized tools in that arsenal as well.

Because social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have become insanely popular with consumers in recent years, a large percentage of online marketers have switched their focus to these social platforms as a way of reaching their target audience.

Social media marketing can be effective to a certain extent, but not always. With millions of messages being exchanged through social media each and every day, it's very easy for a brand's voice to become lost in the fray.  This is because social media marketing is lacking one crucial element required to establish trust among consumers.

Personalization.

A study by Experian found that personalized emails had a 29% higher unique open rates and a 49% higher unique click through rate than unpersonalized messages. According to HubSpot, the click through rates were even higher on emails that addressed the recipient by their first name.

Seven out of ten people report that they always open emails from their preferred brands, according to a report by ExactTarget. Because of this, email conversion rates are three times higher than social media conversion rates, according to data in the same report.

Increased conversion rates means the emails are doing their job by turning those clicks into clients. Nearly 45% of consumers who received a promotional offer via email made a purchase within the past year.

Besides generating leads and securing new clients, email marketing also provides a substantial return on investment (ROI) –making it an extremely cost-effective method of advertising. A report from ExactTarget estimates that for every dollar spend on email marketing campaigns, $44.25 is generated in revenue.

So the short – and long – answer to the question, “Does email marketing really work? - is absolutely.

Not only does it work, 77% of consumers actually prefer email marketing over social media  and other marketing tactics.

Now, here's a question for you.

Don't you think it's time you got started on your brand's email marketing campaign?