A lost website visitor is one thing; a misdirected email can be worse.
Domain name investors often talk about the traffic leakage that occurs when you use a domain name other than .com (or the dominant domain in your country).
Use something other than .com and some visitors will inevitably end up going to the same second level domain in .com. While this is bad, it’s usually not the end of the world. Unless a competitor has set up shop on the .com, most of your customers will still find you. I know that when I type in a .com and should have typed in something else, I turn to Google or recall that it was, say, .org.
But there’s another type of leakage that occurs when you don’t use .com: email. And this is where business can be lost.
Like most domain investors, I’ve been keenly aware of missent email for a long time. I have received lots of emails over the years meant for the owner of a different domain, whether it’s the wrong top level domain or someone forgetting the correct domain. I’ve been amazed to receive emails with social security numbers, medical x-rays…you name it.
But since I started using MailBox park a few months ago, I’ve begun to understand the extent of the problem. I’d categorize my non-marketing messages in three buckets:
1. Expired domains still receiving email meant for the previous owner.
2. Emails sent to my .com when they were intended for the equivalent .org, .co.uk or other address.
3. Messages sent to my generic domains, like Comptroller.com, that are intended for a wholly different domain.
And make no mistake, some misdirected email leads to lost business or unhappy customers. Like the company that sent a follow-up proposal to someone they just met with and then sent another message two weeks later asking why they hadn’t heard back. Or the person running late to a meeting who emailed to say when he’d arrive.
Perhaps this is part of the reason the $20 billion company DXC Technology decided to use a .com domain for email even though its main website is on .technology.
Business depends on email, and it’s a critical use of domain names that we often forget.
This was one of the central topics of my talk in Seattle at Amazon HQ for DNSeattle meetup. Email security is one of the key selling points for us in premium domain name sales.
Glad you are seeing the same.
I have been saying this for awhile now, but like you said, MailboxPark helps highlight it. Add-on type words to what you brand as are often the highest missed targets. aka, your logo and general branding is X but your domain name is XY. Zelle for an example as they brand themselves, yet they use ZellePay(.)com for its domain name. Since “Zelle” is so heavily marketed and referenced, it just makes sense to most people that they would be Zelle(.)com but they are not. Lost web visitors, lost email communication and confusion to consumers is what takes place. TLD is certainly up there as well. .co instead of .com, .com.au, .io, .ai etc all lead to emails to the more common and natural .com
Just to add a little more about emails; I haven’t really pushed email campaigns in years. Mainly because society today has become very sensitive to anything that smells like spam. Even with the perfect title and perfect message in an email, it’s still got a very high probability of being marked as spam from the receiver if they never heard of you before.
It’s not so bad if you’re already established in the industry and your name is familiar. However, for the newer domain investors trying email for the first time, it’s important that they keep the above in mind and move lightly so they don’t end up on block lists, that can instantly ruin the brand they were trying to build for themselves in the industry.
I dont get how this losing emails is any different from losing web traffic. If the same owner has the matching .com, basic regard for this issue would mean he would setup an email forwarding to the right e-mail address.
Sending the e-mail to @domainname.com would mean that emails are forwarded to the right destination.
Email or Web, the issue is the same if one doesnt own the exact match .com (if using a non-com), or a close typo of the SLD.
If I understand this correctly… Someone has a website word1-word2.com
I own word1word2.com my email account [email protected] could be receiving mail that should be sent to their email account? If I do setup an email account to trap some of their mail, this could give them a case for a UDRP.
I know of a few very large well know .org’s that are loosing all their e-mail sent to the corresponding .com. The .com owner has the mail catch enabled on the name. It is not uncommon for someone sending email to type com by mistake sending sensitive email in many cases to the owner of the .com name. If these company’s only knew what was being misdirected they would not sleep well at night, and some would need lawyers.
I’ve received numerous other domain emails over the years from having a plural vs singular word on a dot com or cc. Mostly about billing or support issues in which the customer tries to drop and run, better do this or else! At first I was bothered by it. Then I just started educating the senders, saying hey use the support forms or call the number on that other website.
We don’t send post mail to our banks, nor do we email our banks. We visit the branch or go to the website and login. Good websites provide a contact us form, ticket system, chat, and or control panel for their customers to login. Email can be limited to no-reply and noted for the receiver to use the provided links and website forms. I think spam and lack of email encryption has pushed this way forward.
If we want the web to progress, then we must remind the misguided customer, yours or not. Otherwise you are suggesting that we all pile onto dot com and kill all other domain name extensions. What would domainers trade, and how many traders would there be, would the registrars hold all drops and expired domain names?
There’s no such thing as “mis-directed emails” or “traffic leaks” from domain names.
This concept of “leakage” was hatched & continues to be spread mostly by legacy gTLD hucksters. The lie is predicated on the false premise that if you don’t have a dotcom domain name you lose web traffic & email messages to the matching dotcom. The only way to legitimately claim entitlement to web traffic or emails from a website (domain name) is if you hold the registration rights to that specific domain name.
He or she who controls DNS records for a domain name directs web traffic destinations & email flow for that domain name. While example[.com] & example[.app] share the same second-level domain, they don’t share the same top-level domain.
Referencing what many people see & acknowledge as a real problem -likelihood of consumer/end-user confusion regarding domain name source- and wrapping it in a lie called domain name leakage is a common, unethical sales tactic that should be called out for what it is … a lie. Conflating website source confusion with gTLD preference is intentional trickery. It’s another example of dotcom supremacy propaganda.
All top-level domains or TLDs are of equal utility. They all perform the exact same function.
Don’t be fooled by “everybody uses dotcom so you should too” sales pitch.