OnlineDomain.com Domain Name News & Opinions
This seems like a new low for Uniregistry domain name brokers and it is really insulting to domain buyers.
I inquired about a domain name in July 2016 and 21 emails later (yes they don’t give up) I received this email from a Uniregistry broker yesterday:
“Our payment plans do not accumulate interest.
When someone is willing to lend me for free I want to listen!
What is a good day to discuss?”
I don’t know if anyone else has received anything like this but that is certainly a first for me.
This is actually insulting to me, it came out of nowhere and also makes little sense at the same time. I don’t want a loan and I certainly didn’t ask Uniregistry for one. And the tone, telling me I should listen, is really plain insulting. I didn’t even reply and I get this out of the blue?
And the opening line makes absolutely no sense to me. So no one else cares about your payment plans but I should listen?
BTW the broker’s initials are MR and the previous email (which I never replied to) from this one above was this:
“Do you have a few minutes to discuss the flexible options we have for paying over time?
I am not making any promises that my client is open to it, but it would be worth a conversation.”
Most people are familiar with some cheeky lines by Uniregistry brokers like the “Are you on vacation?” email or the plain stupid “Get Lost?” email. But this email reinforces my “I don’t like brokers” feeling.
Anyway, I am really sorry for the current state of Uniregistry. It started off really promising and I was truly excited. In the past couple of years it has taken a turn for the worst.
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They are truly annoying. One of their brokers called and emailed me for months about an lll.com even though I made it absolutely clear right away there was no way I was going to pay six figures.
Hmmm…if they are repping my domains, I would appreciate all of the follow up
21 emails of cheesy or insulting lines? Yeah, ok.
That is why all the Uniregsitry emails are going into spam folders now.
Unremitting emails from Uniregistry sales staff alienated some of my buyers, back in the day. Hard to estimate how many. A few of them complained to me about the brokers, asking me to ask them to stop.
Joke #1: Even when I was a Uniregistry customer, I was managing the sales leads personally. So these brokers didn’t have my permission to contact my leads in the first place.
Joke #2: Even after Jeff Gabriel banished me from Uniregistry, his staff kept sending emails to my buyers. Again, without permission. Eventually this stopped because I confronted him and Frank Schilling about it at NamesCon.
you know its easy to fake
from: senders in an email???
Yes, thanks. Not relevant here.
Here is the thing, it is not them doing it, it is management who has set those auto emails.
I had inquired about a 4L.com that I see they bought on namejet a year ago for $6xx, they quoted me $45,000 then the email assault began.
I think it is good they are offering payment plans, the catch is you have to use a broker, EPIK has been doing it for years, self brokered, but Uniregistry wants to use their brokers so they take 15% of the take.
Another thing if you self broker, but put a fixed BIN listing, and then you send your buyer to it, they charge a 15% commissions.
Another issue is recently I had one of their brokers say we have a few million domains here, if this one is not in your budget, I can get you into another one, and this was a 4 figure negotiation we were like all of $2k apart. I have the 2 keyword exact match, they are using a 3 keyword, but just to steal my generated lead is a piss off! That was the last straw.
Uniregistry is just to spammy, if you aren’t a client, you never will want to be one after it’s over.
Another issue on the Name Media side they quote crazy prices, so many web design guys don’t even bother now, as they know they are going to get like a mid 5 figure ask for a random 4L.com or something. Some do a whois, some go thru godaddy.
Support is an issue there also, they are working on a bare bones staff, and attempting to grow, it should be much quicker.
I know management is doing that but this was the only time I received this. If I get the same from another broker I will know it is automated.
The brokers ramped up in mid Ocotober, they must be trying to break a sales record on the year, I started getting phone calls about having them take over my portfolio, and alot of old leads started being worked again. I think they are having limited success with the payment plan, and this is the future of good .com’s, it has to be on payment plans as they are getting pricey, and to continue sales people have to average out that purchase over a period, just like leasing a van, or equipment for their business.
Imagine them sending a few thousand of those payment plan emails, and getting a dozen deals done, annoying for you, but profitable for them.
First one might get some deals. The second one is getting a lot of f*ck offs.
The BIN commission is really ridiculous for leads that navigate to your URL and use BIN which is why I won’t list anything at BIN through them.
I think you are a bit too sensitive, all that talk for 21 emails from a broker or automated system??
Wow! Imagine you with a wife on a relationship….
Pretty funny, your buddy at DShame is always bragging about how professional and how hardworking Uniregistry is…
I guess they paid him to sing the song of fake praises.
The issue is not the mail content by itself (it can certainly be improved), the problem is how to stop them.
When you no longer have interest in a domain you should be able to unsubscribe to such email lists for this domain.
Uniregistry should seriously consider adding an unsubscribe link in their emails “for the specified domain” if brokers don’t want to burn a lead themselves (what is happening).
I like the unsubscribe “for a specified domain” idea. Emails I’ve received have a “Click here if you no longer wish to receive emails from Uniregistry” maybe that does unsubscribe you from emails regarding just that particular domain, not sure.
If their follow up method wasn’t working well, I’m sure they would make changes. For me, Uniregistry brokers have done a nice job with old leads. They closed a 3 year old lead for us on ‘Auto Glass Quote .com’ last week. We also have a ~2 year old lead closing this week on a 4L .com (payment pending at escrow). We’ve had quite a few old lead sales since we turned them over earlier this year.
One old lead follow up that resulted in a sale had ~50 emails from start to finish (from the broker alone) of which 5 were “What is holding you back?” to finally get a response and 6 emails were “We will need to be in the mid four figures for me to take it to the owner” once an offer came in.
Now granted, I have thousands of old leads sitting at Uniregistry/DNS since opening an account a few years ago… So while it’s not a large amount of sales percentage wise, it has resulted in a decent amount of extra revenue from inquiries that seemed dead.
In my experience, once Uniregistry receives a firm no (not interested, found another domain, f*ck off, stop emailing me, etc.) they change the status to ‘not completed’ and no more emails are sent. If emails are still being sent after someone asks them to stop, or if they were contacting my leads without approval, that would be a big issue for me.
Flippa has a similar problem and the solution is also the “unsubscribe for a specified domain”:
I have the feeling each month I receive a pair of emails for a new foxo.com auction that never succeeds because he wants an end-user price and it’s not the right platform for that. What a bad idea I had to bid one time on this name… Grrrr!
The result is I am now afraid to bid again in Flippa. This is also why I now rarely ask any price when a domain is listed on Uniregistry, even through WHOIS email.
So for sure, they should put this feature on top of their TODO list. It’s too bad to kill their notoriety and all the good job done for things they can easily fix.
Uniregsitry is absolutely relentless with their follow-up “BOT” emails. I get them all the time! I inquired about one particular domain like 3+ years ago and I still get telemarketing-like email pitches for it almost monthly. It is not only annoying but such a general violation of business email etiquette. Perhaps Frank or his director of corporate communication will see this opinion piece. Thanks for posting Konstantinos!
BullS,
You still mad at me for making fun of how bad your breath was at Namescon? You have to admit, it smelled like when you get a piece of food stuck in your throat for a couple days and then it come out and you smell your finger. That’s EXACTLY what you breath smelled like. When you talked all I could do was hope and pray that it wasn’t me and that I had a tooth go bad earlier that day. I entertained myself the entire night watching people come up to you in the lounge at the Tropicana and then having to take 3 steps back because they felt like they opened up a rotting corpse every time you said “hello” with a long H. John McCain would have tapped out after 3 days of talking to you. I’ve always assumed that’s why you and I don’t get along.
On topic, these are your words not mine. I said that turning over old leads has been successful. I realize you are not strong with the English language but I did state I receive no money from Uniregistry. Only pointing out that they are working my old leads hard and that a couple of readers had sent emails saying they sold names that had dead leads. One for $5K.
Being on the other side of those emails is a different conversation. I don’t buy from domain investors and I sure as hell try not to fill out a Uniregistry banner. I go direct. I’ve seen a few of these emails you all are talking about but not to the extreme you are talking about. And based on the comments then it sounds like they are a lot.
Sounds like you two made out, next time use mints.
“You stink” “No you stink” Children, please. Someone forget to lock the daycare?
DShame- you need to get a mental and eyes check up- age is creeping up on you.
I HAVE NEVER attended any domain conferences so I have no idea who you are referring to.
Oh wait, the reason why you love attending those conferences is to meet your “boy toys”- finally someone is coming out. Business with pleasure.
Back to Uniregistery, I still get spam emails from them. Those domains are way too outrageously expensive.
Grow up Shane, you act like a 12 year old, your either kissing ass or crying, “man up” dude! No wonder why nobody respects you in this industry. Take your beef with Bulls private as well.
Ok Lenny I will. Thanks for reminding me. I can see you are still a tool. You keep hiding, I’ll find your ass eventually.
DShame-
I have never ATTENDED any domain conferences so I don’t know who you are referring to…
BullS,
I’ll see if I can find the emails where you were kissing my ass until I told you to quick spamming me with your jade plant shit. That’s when I became DShame to you. You and Lenny can go back into your little make believe land where you have some relevance to the industry. And for the last time, I won’t send you damn lock of my hair
Bulls ignore Shane, he lies about everything. Nobody listens to him anyways.
I have worked with probaby 15 – 20 registrars over the years and I have never been able to connect with Uniregistry.
As DomainNameSales, I never really liked the way they did certain things and I never trusted the ability of the broker fully.
I am not surprised by the aggressive marketing approach they are using. I do agree that there should be a way to unsubscribe.
Shane, you crack me up. I admire your matter-of-fact way of delivering a tongue lashing.
I have gotten so good at skimming my emails, I rarely even open sales emails anymore. The subject lines have to be almost perfect for me to open them.
Something is causing a malware popup when reading your blog on my iPhone.
Are you sure it is my blog? Can you email me a screenshot? To be sure I have updated everything so please try again. Thanks for the heads up!
Following-up is great but doing it to a degree that your buyers get aggravated and add your email address in their blocked/spam filter isn’t. It also doesn’t build trust with the brand.
Mark it as spam and move on with your life.
This is how they make sales I guess.
I don’t think anyone buys after this.
how can they dare help you acquire a domain name, assuming you don’t have cash available like 99.9% of domainers
if i am interested in a domain,
i am really happy to have the opportunity to acquire a great domain name at zero interest rate
that’ s a great proposition offer
they clearly don’t even check the Whois on domains i inquired about a name last year. After refusing an offer for the .uk domain he let it expire and uniregistry are still trying to sell it to me after I caught the name several months ago.
I don’t agree with them sending 21 emails, but sending one that offers domain financing is actually something useful and something most domain buyers would be interested in, so out of all the emails, that one seems very appropriate. I don’t see it as insulting; any more than most ads on TV or the web that offer you things you don’t need or already have.
First email is ok. Follow up was plain insulting, ridiculous, stupid and also partly makes no sense.
When you inquire about a domain name and then receive a reply you should atleast reply back with your max offer and tell them to not email you unless they are selling for such amount.
After that, send the email to the spam folder or just delete. Simple. Many domainers who do outbound get angry when someone doest answer their email , specially when they asked about a certain name.
yeah, they are really a pain in the a**. one thing is to be persistent, another is to be plain annoying. Make 2 or 3 follow ups at most and give up. maybe after a year came back with one for their template emails asking if the client is still interested on the domain and would like to talk. But after no reply again give the f*ck up!
the email offering domain finance is good idea however. in this point I don’t agree with you KZ.
Did you read the email?
I think you misunderstood the broker email Konstantinos.
“Our payment plans do not accumulate interest” means that they do not charge someone interest during the payment plan term – so interest fees do not accumulate during the payment term timeframe. That segways into line two where they are stating that it is essentially a free loan.
In my account, I can see that they stop emailing any potential customer who says that they are not interested. I also see opted out language on the lead when people haven’t specifically asked in email so I assume those are people opting out via a link of some sort.
I’m pretty sure most of these emails they crank out are automated, and I would guess that they test new ones on a regular basis and then track what kind of click-through / call-through rate they get on each subject / email body combo they send. Certain combos should bubble to the top and will be used more frequently. At least I hope that is what they are doing.
Maybe I did. That is regarding the first sentence. Thank you.
But that is not the insulting part.
Telling me that I should take a “free” loan and that I should LISTEN is different. Who said I need a loan? (and that is not even a loan but anyway)
The price is too high so even a loan paying ME %1 interest doesn’t make sense to consider.
Also sending out 21 automated emails is kind of idiotic. People start to understand when an email is automated and they simply ignore it.
Finally, it is really stupid that they don’t include previous emails in their replies. They email you 12 months later and they don’t even mention the price…??? How am I supposed to remember?
I think Uniregistry is a great registrar for us to get domains.
But i agree that the issue is not the mail content by itself (it can certainly be improved), the problem is how to stop them.
When you no longer have interest in a domain you should be able to unsubscribe to such email lists for this domain.
By the way ,is anybody interested in new gTLD,such as .top？