How Neustar moved to .neustar – The New gTLD email problem remains

Neustar shared a guide with all the lessons learned from the launch of .neustar. One of the biggest challenges was moving to the .brand email addresses.

Essentially they explained how they moved from their previous website at Neustar.biz to their .brand .neustar, and to home.neustar in particular that is their new official domain name and website.

Neustar is focusing lately on getting more companies to own AND use a .brand extension. Neustar is the .biz, .us, .co and .nyc registry and the backend registry for many New gTLDs.

The 30-page guide is a valuable resource for anyone to move their website to a new domain name. It’s a detailed look at what Neustar learned as they planned, executed and launched their .neustar TLD.

.Neustar email addresses

While the whole guide was very interesting to read, especially to a web developer, I found the part about how they moved their staff emails to .neustar email addresses.
This initiative involved transitioning their staff and group emails from @neustar.biz addresses to a variety of new addresses on .neustar, including:

• All staff emails now have the structure name@team.neustar
• Customer Support teams have emails on @support.neustar
• Some unique cases have been built on @team.neustar that sit outside the regular structure

They have retained everyone’s previous @neustar.biz emails as a secondary email address in Microsoft Exchange, ensuring contacts who are unaware of their .brand transition will still be able to successfully send them emails.

“Keeping the @neustar.biz emails was also an important backup in the event staff try to sign into an external system that doesn’t yet recognize .neustar as a valid email address. While rare, this does still happen, so it’s valuable to have as an alternate option.”

.Neustar domain names

To replace the traditional structure of having business units, sub-brands, and so on, all located on the same single domain with lengthy extensions (i.e. neustar.biz/security), Neustar has set up specific sites for its key business units on their own dedicated domains, including:

• security.neustar
• marketing.neustar
• registry.neustar
• risk.neustar
• communications.neustar

Because that would be more difficult to manage Neustar invested in a newer, more sophisticated CMS system that can handle the demands of a multi-site TLD.

Neustar is also using the domains t.neustar and i.neustar as URL shorteners for social media.

The .neustar launch has encompassed a wide variety of activities, including:

1. Rebuilding their new website using home.neustar
2. Building dedicated sites for each of their business units
3. Building their own Neustar search engine
4. Moving their staff emails to .neustar addresses
5. Moving to a new, branded URL shortener for social media
6. Creating additional pathways to their content via vanity URL redirects
7. Conducting an SEO analysis
8. Integrating the TLD with existing systems
9. Building an analytics framework
10. Creating a thorough communications plan
11. Making additional updates to reflect the change in address