Opportunity:
FairWinds’ client, a leading provider of commercial cleaning, sanitation and hygiene solutions, needed to find a better way to leverage its domain name portfolio and to take advantage of more opportunities for brand promotion and protection online, in order to enhance its overall web presence. FairWinds’ solution was to propose an Efficiency Project (“Efficiency”). The Efficiency delivers measurable improvements to a client’s domain name program by streamlining its domain name portfolio, highlighting areas where key improvements can be made. This includes recommendations on current and future potential investments in new spaces, such as social media and new generic top-level domain names (gTLDs).
Approach:
FairWinds began by thoroughly researching the client’s business operations, products, and brand strategy and conducting an extensive review of the client’s domain name portfolio, including a detailed audit and analysis of existing domain holdings, checking for portfolio effectiveness, efficiency, and revenue opportunities. Next, FairWinds compiled lists of recommended domain names to be cut, retained, redirected, registered, or recovered. FairWinds also performed a cursory review of key usernames on a variety of social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, to determine how the client could improve its presence in the social media sphere. The last step was to consider the introduction of new gTLDs and the potential impact on the client.
Impact:
FairWinds discovered that nearly 63% of the client’s domain names were of little to no value and could be cut, or their registrations allowed to lapse, to allow for significant annual cost savings without leaving the client’s brands vulnerable to harm. Upon implementing these recommendations, FairWinds saved the client over $150,000 in one quarter and recovered several valuable, potentially damaging third party-owned domain names, which now redirect Internet users to official client content. This has led to increases in qualified traffic and customer satisfaction. The Efficiency successfully fulfilled its purpose in this case by delivering efficient and effective recommendations that allowed the client to experience maximum cost savings with minimal investment in a very short amount of time.