ConvergedInfrastructure (.) co.uk

[Federer]

£500 end user sale (outbound email)

 

[TallBloke]

Nice sale of a techie generic!

 

[Federer]

Thanks

 

[Adam H]

Well played, have you changed your outbound email template since you posted it in the last thread ?

 

[Federer]

Thanks.
Here is the template that we are using:




Hi there,

Your company may be interested in a domain that recently became available and that we are now selling:

> DomainName.co.uk

The domain is easy to remember and could be used to help increase your online presence through development, advertising and so forth. The asking price is GBP 250.
Please let us know if there is interest as we are contacting some companies within the industry. We would have no issue doing the transfer of ownership first and payment afterwards.

Regards
Full Name

COMPANY NAME - Registered No: Number
Registered Place: Address
Post Code - City | Country
Direct: (xxxxx) xxx xxx xxx | Cell: (xxxxx) xxx xxx xxx
- Any history of the Domain can be viewed here: web.archive.org/web/*/Media-Lawyers.co.uk
- Registration information: whois.domaintools.com/Media-Lawyers.co.uk
- This is a one time email advertisment being sent to you just once - please reply with STOP if you no longer wish to receive a message from us in the future.

 

[Adam H]

Do responses normally come in via email or do they end up calling you ? I generally don't add my phone number to outbound sales, I suspect I could be losing out by not adding a phone contact.

 

[Federer]

It adds credibility.

90% of sales are finalised via email - sometimes I will call when they have doubts/questions - on rare occasions, they will call me.

 

[Edwin]

Thanks for sharing all these success stories (and how you did it).

I've been experimenting with a bit of outbound, and it's amazing how often a company's main email address will bounce email (even a fairly large-looking company). I reckon that about 10% of my emails bounce, but not for spam reasons (not if I believe the error reports, anyway - it's stuff like "no such user at this address" or even "we only accept inbound emails at this distribution address from authorised senders"). In all cases, the emails are the ones the companies have chosen to publish publicly on their "Contact Us" pages.

I wonder if it ever dawns on them why they're not getting any results from their web presence? Maybe they don't even care? (That's probably true in the bigger organisations where it's always Someone Else's Problem)

 

[Federer]

About 5-10% of our emails also bounce. We also only send emails to companies that publish their details on their web pages. But when you're sending 35-45 targeted emails, 30-40 are hitting the inbox which usually suffices to generate a positive lead/sale (when the domain is half-decent).

 

[Edwin]

Interesting you're seeing the same thing. They're failing to clear a pretty fundamental hurdle when nobody can contact them off of their website!

If we take the lower number, 5%, that could mean there are tens of thousands of still-active companies across the UK that are throwing their web presence away. No wonder you get so many people complaining on forums that doing business online is hard (it is hard, but it's nigh-impossible if you stick a barrier up like no working email)

BTW, I've only been emailing B2B service companies so it's not as if they have an online shop to bring them business.

 

[JMI]

Good stuff.

One thing - I can't see any reason to include an archive.org or Domain Tools link when Nominet must be cleaner, the archive.org stuff I should think would confuse the pants off some buyers.. I'm not sure I would want them to be digging about either - what do I know, your selling!

 

[Federer]

The link is automated depending on the domain name we are marketing (we also market a number of .COM/.NET domains, in addition to .COM) - I agree it makes more sense for these extensions.

 

[wonder_lander]

Do responses normally come in via email or do they end up calling you ? I generally don't add my phone number to outbound sales, I suspect I could be losing out by not adding a phone contact.

I have a virtual geo number from voipfone for providing a contact point. It's £2.40 per month and I have an app on my phone which the calls then route via. It's very handy from not having to give out your mobile and imo adds an additional level of authority.

 

[Edwin]

We do the same sort of thing with a SkypeIn number. 99% of calls are from scammers, but a quick Google of their caller ID soon sifts them out as there tend to be dozens or hundreds of complaints already.

 

[wonder_lander]

We do the same sort of thing with a SkypeIn number. 99% of calls are from scammers, but a quick Google of their caller ID soon sifts them out as there tend to be dozens or hundreds of complaints already.

The cost is so low that it's easy enough to also burn the number and get a new one (I've actually got 2 for different scenarios) if you're getting hit with too many scammer calls. I guess you could even code your website to grab the current number from a database field and then a single update would cascade it across your pages.

 

[Adam H]

I have a virtual geo number from voipfone for providing a contact point. It's £2.40 per month and I have an app on my phone which the calls then route via. It's very handy from not having to give out your mobile and imo adds an additional level of authority.

Yeah I've spoke to the voipfone guys a couple of times but never got around to sorting it. You might know if I can do this then... If I have a Voipfone number, redirect that call to a phon eline or mobile, is there anyway of telling that the call is coming from a particular number ?

For example if I have multiple businesses, therefore got a number of different voipfone numbers, but they were all redirected to the same phone, would you be able to tell which voip number it was coming from ? So you could answer the phone appropriately for each business ?

 

[Adam H]

Also can the numbers given for voip be added to the TPS service ?

 

[wonder_lander]

Yeah I've spoke to the voipfone guys a couple of times but never got around to sorting it. You might know if I can do this then... If I have a Voipfone number, redirect that call to a phon eline or mobile, is there anyway of telling that the call is coming from a particular number ?

For example if I have multiple businesses, therefore got a number of different voipfone numbers, but they were all redirected to the same phone, would you be able to tell which voip number it was coming from ? So you could answer the phone appropriately for each business ?

That's a good question and one I don't know the answer to! On the voipfone softphone app you can't tell the inbound number being called, only the call ID for the caller. There may be more sophisticated softphone apps but I've not investigated them.

 

[Adam H]

It would be good if that could happen, purely so you can answer the phone knowing its for a certain business, I.e if you have one dedicated to domain related calls, it would be great to know that the call is coming in to relate it to that.

 

[getmein]

We add a 'whisper' (which is a short message, to help you understand where the call is coming from) to inbound calls coming from non-geo numbers e.g. 0800. It helps for an operator to answer the call in a way that's consistent with the website they called from 'thanks for calling purplewidgets.com, thanks for calling green widgets.com' - very useful if you've got lots of sites in a vertical.

I know that the phone systems at some call centres have a problem with the whisper, however - whenever I test it direct to my mobile/land line - it's always works.