OPENSRS: julio 2011

viernes, 29 de julio de 2011

Holiday Hours: Civic Holiday, August 1st, 2011

Posted: 28 Jul 2011 01:46 PM PDT

This coming Monday our offices will be closed for a Canadian civic holiday. But to all of our non-Canadian friends around the world there’s no reason to be jealous.

The August long weekend is often the worst traffic day of the year for cottage goers as make their way out of the steamy city via congested highways, toward their comfy cold beer, Adirondack chairs and docks on the water.

Sure, eventually they’ll arrive and when they do the chairs are comfy and the lake water is a perfect 78 degrees Fahrenheit. But a short two days later, and they’re back on the road, battling traffic once again. Heck, there’s even some rain in the forecast. Lame.

See? Almost no reason to be jealous at all. In fact, they deserve our sympathy… wading through the biggest traffic jam of the year, only to enjoy a cold beer on a dock with some deer flies and mosquitos? No thank you.

Now, on to official business: Our Technical Support team continues to be available 24/7 to assist you. Please note that during this closure, there will be:

No orders or requests processed for the following TLD’s: .at, .fr, .ch, .li, .dk, .com.mx
No special processing for .ca (registrant transfers, conflicting and municipal registrations) or .eu/.be (redemptions).

Here are the hours by department:

Department	Dates and Hours
Technical Support	Regular hours
Payments	Email support: payments@opensrs.org
Compliance	Closed Aug 1st (Monday)
Service Bureau	Closed Aug 1st (Monday)

miércoles, 27 de julio de 2011

Help Your Customers Find the Perfect Domain plus 1 more

Help Your Customers Find the Perfect Domain

Posted: 27 Jul 2011 07:35 AM PDT

Are you missing out on sales by not helping your customers find the perfect domain name?

Offering Premium Domains from OpenSRS is one great way to help customer rind the right name, and complete the sale. Implementing Premium Names is easier than you might think.

Here's a couple of different ways to get started with Premium Domains:

Offer a "domain search consultancy" service to help customers find the right domain
Implement Premium Domains results into your search results using the OpenSRS API
Look through existing customer domains for domains with dashes and add-on words and cross-reference for better options from the Premium Domains database

Lots More Help to Get You Started

To help you out with both customer education pre-sale, and to help you or your staff when they are making the sale, we've put together some information about Premium Domains, including why you should consider offering them as part of your suite of services.

You’ll also find a new Premium Domains end-user FAQ in our Marketing Resource section that’s ready for you to grab and use to help make the case with your customers that they should be willing to pay a bit more for a Premium Domain rather than settling for something that isn’t quite as good.

We answer questions like “Why are these Premium Domains more expensive than 'regular' domains?” and “Why should I consider spending more on this Premium Domain vs. an available domain?”

Those new materials are in addition to the existing Premium Domains video (found on that same page).

Free Marketing Content: Why Business Needs a Professional Email Address

Posted: 27 Jul 2011 05:18 AM PDT

A short while ago, Michael wrote a plea from Marketing inviting our Resellers to tell us what they need from us that would help them be more successful.

One of the requests was for us to craft some content around the positioning of free vs paid email accounts using domain names for end users. We took a couple of stabs at it, and along with input from you, we’ve produced this one pager you can use however you like. It’s available in our email marketing resources section.

Go ahead and customize it for your own brand, copy and paste into you website, whatever you like. And don’t forget we’re always here for you… tell us what you need and we’ll get on it!

Professional Email Addresses

A lack of trust and perceived professionalism can directly translate to lost revenue.

There are lots of ways you've worked to build positive brand and inspire trust with your clients. Pleasant phone greetings when client calls in, a professional sign over the office entrance, even stationary on a nice paper stock are important to let your clients know that you're serious about your business.

But what about having your own domain name for email?

How does it look after a great conversation with a potential customer when you hand them your card and your email address you expect to have important business conversations with belongs to one of the big email providers offering free service?

Put another way, imagine a lawyer with an email address of consultantpat@hotmail.com. Do you think Pat's clients would be comfortable knowing that private correspondence with their consultant was being transmitted through a free email service? How would their perception change if Pat's email were pat@robinsonconsulting.com?

Professional branding aside, there are some great reasons to have your email at your own domain name for business email:

Who's going to help? Delete an important email? Can't log in to your account? Have a question about the number of email you can send from your account? The free email service providers have self-service tools to help you figure out your problem, but what can you do if you still have a problem? Who will you talk to and how long will you have to wait for help?

Will your emails be delivered? "I didn't receive your email". Does this sound familiar? Free email accounts are very popular with spammers. Did you know that some mail services started blocking mass mail delivery from free email accounts with these domain names?

The switching cost to a domain-based email address later is higher. There's a strong benefit to having people know where to find you. Changing your email address can be a lot like a retailer relocating. All the business built over the years could disappear, as customers can no longer find you at the address.

Unintended communication could be embarrassing, even damaging. Jon Smith is our hypothetical accountant with a free GMail account at jon.smith@gmail.com. Can you guess the number of times his clients have emailed their sensitive financial documents (even tax returns) to john.smith@gmail.com? Sure, it's the client's fault for the mistake, but could this have been prevented if he were Jon@ReliableAccountants.com?

Free email accounts are very popular these days. But if you're serious about your business and your brand, it might be time to consider how current and potential clients are judging you by a simple email address.

Call and talk to us. We'll be more than happy to tell you how our services can help your business be more professional, starting today.

martes, 26 de julio de 2011

Sell Trustwave SSL and Win an iPad 2!

Posted: 26 Jul 2011 07:53 AM PDT

Between August 1, 2011 and September 30, 2011, we’re giving our Resellers a chance to win an iPad 2 and some other great prizes as part of a fantastic Trustwave SSL Incentive Program.

Here’s how the Incentive Program works:

Sell at least one Trustwave-branded SSL certificate during August or September, and you’ll automatically receive an entry into a random drawing for the Grand Prize of an Apple iPad 2 from Trustwave and OpenSRS!

Each Trustwave SSL certificate you sell earns you one entry, so the more you sell, the better your chances are to win! Everyone who sells an SSL certificate from Trustwave is automatically entered to win – there’s no signup required.

More Chances to Win

If you’re a first-time Trustwave SSL reseller, we’re going to give you even more chances to win! Sell your very first Trustwave SSL certificate in August or September, and we’ll give you an extra entry!

And for early birds, we’ll have a few surprise drawings sometime in August and September for those who get started selling right away. Stay tuned – we’ll be announcing those surprise draw winners through the OpenSRS Reseller Blog.

We’ll announce the Grand Prize winner of the iPad 2 in early October. Good luck to everyone!

jueves, 21 de julio de 2011

OpenSRS Reseller Advisory Council. We’re Listening.

Posted: 20 Jul 2011 02:19 PM PDT

How often have you spoken with somebody and you can just tell that they’re not paying attention to what you’re saying? Their eyes look away for only a second, but that’s all it takes for you to know they’re just waiting for you to stop talking so they can blurt out whatever it is they want to say.

It can be frustrating for those with something to say because conversations are as much about listening as they are about talking.

Listening is silent. It doesn’t surprise and it will never shock. Perhaps that’s why talking has been so popular; It’s easy to keep a person’s attention while we’re making noise, isn’t it?

By listening, we can hear all about the challenges, the pains, frustrations, joys and successes of those we care about. We can empathize by listening and show that we care about all the little (and big) things going on with the people in our lives and the customers we talk to.

Recognizing that we wanted to become better listeners at OpenSRS, a few months ago, we launched a plan that would see the formation of the OpenSRS Reseller Advisory Council. It’s an initiative that begins tomorrow and it’s aimed at getting some of our smartest, creative, engaged Resellers to talk, while we listen.

What is the goal of the Council?

We created the Advisory Council with a specific purpose; to equip an underserved segment of our Reseller base with a voice that we can listen to. We plan to solicit their thoughts and benefit from their experience. We think we all have a lot to gain by doing this.

We’re going to listen to what the founding members have to say and do our best to tie what we hear to real business outcomes. The current plan is a conference call each quarter, with access to a private forum to continue the conversation after the calls. We may, depending on the needs of the group, create smaller committees to discuss, debate and come to the larger group with recommendations.

In the end, we’re going to move forward. It might be an inch forward, and not a mile to start with, but it will be a step forward.

The topics for the agenda were created from comments and answers given in the Advisory Council application form and we’re also crowd-sourcing additional topics and voting on the ones most important to the members. You can see the most popular agenda items at the right.

We don’t get to choose what to talk about, the members do.

How were the Council members chosen?

It started with an email to a couple thousand already engaged Resellers, inviting them to complete the application form. We had over 100 Resellers apply.

From there, we identified a group of 40 individuals, the majority of them senior executives, or company founders working at companies that have 100 to 1,000 domain names under management with OpenSRS.

If you completed an application form and did not hear from us, we’re sorry about that… you will soon. It’s not that we haven’t approved you, it’s just that we’re taking things a bit slow as we get started and another Reseller may have been a better fit this time around.

If you’re a reseller outside of North America, we’re running a separate Council (at least in the beginning), so we’ll be touching base with you to get the ball rolling. We’ll also be sharing what we learned from the first Council meeting.

Do you want to get involved?

Super! Let us know in the comments and we’ll follow-up as we run additional recruitment efforts. Be warned though, membership in the Council is not a free ride. There’s work involved and we’ll have high expectations of you if you’re accepted.

Here we go!

We’re really exciting about this initiative and it is our hope that the founding members of the Advisory Council will play a critically important role in helping us become better listeners as we continue our efforts to build the world’s most reseller friendly, super-focused provider of Domain Names, SSL and Email services!

martes, 19 de julio de 2011

OpenSRS Email Now Offers 5GB Standard

Posted: 19 Jul 2011 06:10 AM PDT

Starting today we’re upgrading all OpenSRS Email Service mailboxes to 5GB of storage at no additional cost.

There are two phases to the upgrade:

Effective today, new accounts you provision will automatically have 5GB of storage.
For existing accounts, beginning today, we’re going to start upgrading them from 2GB of storage to 5GB of storage. Getting all accounts upgraded might take a day or two, so feel free to tell your customers and users about the new storage quota, but please let them know they may not see the added space right away.

Share the News

You don’t need to do anything – the upgrades will happen automatically, and without any downtime or interruption in service.

Do enjoy the extra space and, by all means, let your customers know about the good news. Feel free to take all the credit, if you want. We don’t mind.

miércoles, 13 de julio de 2011

Important news about the OpenSRS Status Dashboard

Posted: 12 Jul 2011 09:01 AM PDT

Today, we’re very happy to announce that we have rebuilt the OpenSRS Status Dashboard with superhero powers!

Many of you are aware of the OpenSRS Status Dashboard. It’s our primary communications channel to tell you about upcoming maintenances and report (in realtime) any issues affecting our services.

For those of you not familiar, you should really check it out. Go ahead, we’ll wait.

There was just one thing that bothered us about the dashboard: we hosted it on our own infrastructure, using our own DNS. So while everything generally chugged along without issue, there have been a couple of instances where issues with certain parts of our infrastructure would take the dashboard offline.

For example a network event within a data centre, a problem with our DNS infrastructure, or even a failure to email would mean this dashboard might become unavailable, or cut off communications during the times when we most need to let you know what’s up.

Here’s a quick rundown of the main changes to your new dashboard:

A new domain name has been registered (opensrsstatus.com) that uses independent DNS services for resolution.
The webservers, data centre and all related network infrastructure is out-of-band and no components or services rely on our infrastructure.
More update options! In addition to the dashboard view, updates can be received via email, RSS and Twitter (via @OpenSRSStatus)

Since we launched the integrated Status Dashboard a few years ago, it’s become an integral tool for us to communicate with you during important events and we’re really excited about these changes.

Please take a moment to update your bookmarks to reflect the new domain name. We currently have a redirect in place so that status.opensrs.com will bring you to opensrsstatus.com, but if you don’t update your bookmarks, you could find yourself without status updates when you need them most.

Now, for the last time, go update your bookmarks! You’ll be glad you did.

lunes, 11 de julio de 2011

.CO Renewal Season is Here

Posted: 11 Jul 2011 08:17 AM PDT

It’s been almost a year since the launch of the .CO domain extension. That means registrants who bought their .CO domains in those first few weeks and months are starting to see renewal notices and the earliest .CO registrants are already renewing their domains.

As with other domain extensions, getting over that first year renewal hump is hugely important in keeping that domain for the long term. Renewal rates on domains more than one year old (in other words, domains that have been renewed once already) are considerably higher than the renewal rate for first year domains.

Boost your Renewal Rates

There are some simple steps you can take to boost your renewal rates for .CO domains as we move into this period of high activity:

Make sure your renewal messages are setup: OpenSRS sends out renewal messages to registrants automatically. Double check to make sure that you are sending renewal emails out at 90, 60 and 30 days in addition to the notices that go out closer to expiry. And take the time to customize those templates with contact information so your customer knows where and how to renew their domain. Those templates and settings can be found in the “Renewal Management” section of the Reseller Web Interface.
Consider adding renewal reminders to your homepage or interface: A simple banner ad or notice inside your control panel might be all it takes to convince or remind a customer to renew their domain. Don’t overlook any opportunity to remind your customers to renew for another year, or more.
Send out a renewal email campaign: We have some great .CO marketing materials you can use to create a quick email reminding customers to renew their names. Point out the increasing value of .CO domains and make sure you build the case for them to hold on to their domain for another year. And don’t forget to encourage customers without a .CO domain to visit your website and search for a .CO domain that might be an even better fit for their business.

.CO Facts and Figures

CO Internet, the .CO registry operator, passed along some interesting stats about the first year of offering .CO domains worldwide.

.CO sites are being used: .CO domain growth is very similar to the growth seen in active sites under .CO domains. This is a very good trend and shows that registrants are getting .CO domains to use them. A key factor in renewal rates is whether the domain resolves to an active site, so seeing a high rate of usage for .CO domains indicates that renewal rates and customer retention amongst .CO registrants will be good.
.CO registrants are spread around the world: While about 48% of the .CO domains were registered in the US, countries like the UK, Canada, Australia and Germany are all in the top ten for countries where .CO domains are registered. .CO resonates with domain buyers around the world, in many langauges.
.CO is one million domains strong: As of last month, there were more than one million .CO domains registered and that number continues to grow. The launch of .CO domains has been one of the most successful domain extension launches in recent memory.

viernes, 8 de julio de 2011

goMobi v1.4 Update Coming with Analytics, New Icon Sets and more

Posted: 07 Jul 2011 12:21 PM PDT

On July 10, 2011, the next version of the goMobi mobile website builder will be released. There's nothing you need to do either as a reseller or an end-user – the update happens automatically across all goMobi accounts.

Existing sites will be unaffected by the changes, but you might want to let your goMobi customers know about some super new features that are part of the 1.4 release.

Major new features:

Analyze traffic with complete site analytics
Create and print a QR Code-enabled marketing flyer
Upload images to a new hosted image gallery

Enhancements to existing features:

More icon sets
Support for multiple locations and coupon codes
Ability to connect with popular location-based services (foursquare, Facebook Places, Google Places, Yelp and Gowalla
Better social network support (especially on higher end devices)
Improved color choices for backgrounds and text/titles

…and many more fixes and enhancements.

You can read more about the changes on our goMobi features section, including screenshots for some of the new features.

Available in Test Environment Today

The Horizon Test Environment is connected to the goMobi Test Bed system which has already been updated to v1.4. You can log into your OpenSRS Horizon Test account and see some of the new features of the Site Builder first hand. Log in with your usual OpenSRS credentials here.