Check Your Spam Folder & Your Priorities

Call it spam, call it junk mail, whatever you call it, it’s one of the banes of the digital world and these days many of us get so much email, we just delete the contents of our spam folders without even looking (or leave it to our providers to empty it automatically). Actually, we probably should make a point of checking our spam folders we hit that delete button.

Spam folders can contain hidden surprises Most of what gets put into spam is exactly that, but sometimes legitimate messages get put there too since the sheer quantity of email sent around the world is making it harder and harder for email companies to work out what is unwanted spam and what are popular newsletters and other genuine forms of mass mail. What’s more, even genuine spam can have some value, either for amusement or education. For example, the many emails washing around offering to deal with various threats to your business can actually make valid points, although getting in touch with a spammer is unlikely to be the best way to take action on the matter.

Brands, domains and international business A widespread piece of scam goes along the following lines. “We’ve noticed that someone is trying to register a local variation of your domain name. Have you authorised this? If not, please contact us, so we can help you to stop someone else stealing your name.”. We’ve never taken anybody up on this offer, so we don’t actually know what happens next, but we suspect it would involve a lot more money and hassle than just claiming the domain directly – if that’s even necessary.

Brands beat domains Here’s a point it’s important for you to understand. A brand is so important that it takes priority and precedence over just about everything else. If customers recognise your brand, they will come and find you on the net or in the real world, even if you’ve been unable to get the internet (or real world) address you wanted. Putting the situation another way, a brand can manage without a perfectly-matching domain. A domain without an associated brand is going to have its work cut out to get traffic and visibility, in fact building up domains is basically all about building a brand. Hence, while it’s generally preferable to own the domains related to your brand (and ideally relevant handles on the key social media sites as well), it’s far more important to build and protect your brand by means of trademarking and such like than it is to buy every domain you could possibly own.

The internet is global, but domains are increasingly local If you follow the development of the internet, you will already be aware that ICANN, the authority behind internet domains, recently introduced a number of new top-level domains, to allow for greater niching of internet addresses, particularly by locality, such as .London. These have been eagerly snapped up, showing just how keen businesses are to establish an online foothold and how they are starting to move away from the strategy of going “.com” first and looking at other domains (such as .co.uk) as an afterthought, if at all. While the internet does facilitate global trade, the fact of the matter is that practicalities mean that relatively few companies do actually work on a truly global basis. In fact, many profitable companies only work in a specific geographic area in their own country. That being so, while they may benefit from an online presence, it’s unlikely that they would get any advantage from buying up international domains. Even if a company does plan to expand internationally, it’s perfectly feasible to use a .co.uk address which is then used to create a sub-site tailored to the needs of the target country. As previously mentioned, the key point is to ensure that visitors to the site recognise the brand, rather than the domain.