The company using MyEmma.com brands as just “Emma”. That’s a mistake.
Over the holiday I was reading an article on the local newspaper’s web site when I saw an ad for an e-mail marketing service. The service was called “Emma”, and it caught my attention. I know about many e-mail marketing companies and hadn’t heard of this one:
Advertisement on Statesman.com
I clicked the ad and landed on the web site for Emma, which is apparently a popular service used by organizations such as New York University, DHL, and Coinstar. In the upper left corner of the web page was the company’s Emma logo, with the registered trademark symbol:
I then took a look at the inquiry form to get more information, and again the branding for the service was “Emma”:
OK, so the company is called Emma and is branded as Emma. It has a registered trademark for Emma. And the company’s web address is…
MyEmma.com.
Huh? Emma.com is owned by Oversee.net MicroStrategy, Inc. Emma, Inc., the e-mail marketing company, uses MyEmma.com. MyEmma is a perfectly fine name, but the company should have branded itself as MyEmma instead of Emma if it had to use the domain MyEmma.com. That’s the company’s domain name, and the company is harder to find with its current Emma branding.
Yes, Emma.com is a better domain than MyEmma.com. I’m sure any company would prefer to have Emma.com. But if you don’t have it, then you shouldn’t brand your company as just “Emma”. You should brand it as “MyEmma”.
jorge says
>> You should brand it as “MyEmma”.
Maybe not. If MyEmma.COM gets big, then the value of plain-vanilla emma.com may go down, because other companies wouldn’t want to use it (on account of the confusion).
And, if they wait long enough they may get lucky if the UDRP rules changes in the future. After all, the current owner is just parking EMMA.COM and may accidentally show some MyEMMA.COM ads.
I agree though, that it is pretty silly.
— jorge.
Rob Sequin says
They are a start up and in this case Emma.com is just a brand, not so much a type in domain so I’m not sure they would want to lay out a large sum for Emma.com.
However, I would advise them to invest in EmailMarketing.com but that owned by yesmail.com so probably not for sale.
DR. DOMAIN says
They did’nt think this one through.If I owned EMMA.COM…and I saw the IP work they’d gone through-I’m pretty sure “discount” would be the last thing on my mind in a sale negotiation.Especially if I owned the domain before they did the IP work.
Anon says
It looks like MicroStrategy Inc owns emma.com, not Oversee, though the name is parked at DS.
Andrew says
@ Anon – good catch. The domain forwards to Oversee’s Information.com domain, so when I clicked the domaintools whois button on my toolbar it just pulled up the record for information.com.
Thanks
Adam says
Re-branding time . . . right around the corner, eh?
jorge says
RebrandingTime.com is available 🙂