Sep 24, 2020 - by Staff Writer
Corporate Domain Name Management in 2020: The Impact of Portfolio Size on Management, Objectives and Satisfaction
The Fourth Annual Corporate Domain Name Management Survey was sent to over 300 corporate domain name professionals across verticals including retail, manufacturing, financial services, travel, and media. Of those that responded, 18% had portfolios of less than 500 names, 25% had portfolios of 501 – 3000 domains, 35% had portfolios of 3001 – 10,000 domains, and 22% had more than 10,000 domains.
This year’s survey revealed an interesting trend related to where within organizations domain name portfolios are managed. In 2019, nearly 52% of respondents stated that domain names were managed within the Legal Department. However this year, only 34% of all respondents stated that domain names were managed within the Legal Department. In looking more closely, there appears to be a correlation between portfolio size, and where domains are managed with portfolios of more than 10,000 domains least likely to be managed in the Legal Department (23%) and most likely to be managed by shared services or a hybrid group (38%). Portfolios of 1501 – 3000 domains were most often managed in the Legal Department (44%), and small portfolios of less than 500 names were managed by the Legal Department (36%) or IT (27%).
It’s interesting to note that those with large portfolios of more than 10,000 domains were least concerned with cost cutting (23%), and those with portfolios of 1501 - 3000 were most concerned with cost cutting (78%).
In comparison to last year’s survey, there were also a number of notable findings, including:
- 77% said that ensuring the security of their portfolio was an extremely important goal compared to 91% from the previous year, although 100% of all very large portfolio owners (greater than 10,000 domains) said it was an extremely important goal
- 51% said that managing portfolios was becoming more difficult which was slight drop of 3% from the previous year
- 75% said paring portfolios was a challenge which represented a 6% increase from the year before
- 74% said GDPR presents a challenge in accessing ownership records which represented a 9% decrease from previous year
This year we added a new question and asked respondents on scale of 1 – 10 (with 10 being the most likely), “how likely is it that you would recommend your current registrar to a friend or colleague?” This question yielded an Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 42 across all respondents, which is slightly above average for SaaS companies. Interestingly, those with portfolios of more than 10,000 domains were most likely to recommend their registrar to a friend or colleague with an NPS of 67, and those with small portfolios of less than 500 domains were least likely to recommend their registrar to a friend or colleague with an NPS of 20.
So what can we take away from this year’s survey?
Those with very large portfolios are more satisfied with their registrars, are more likely to be managed by cross-functional or shared services teams, and are least focused on cutting costs. Those with smaller portfolios are in need of better service and support, and those with mid-sized portfolios are most focused on cost-cutting. Clearly, the approach, objectives, and experiences of domain professionals vary significantly based upon portfolio size.
The information contained in this article is provided for informational purposes only.
The Fourth Annual Corporate Domain Name Management Survey was taken in September 2020 and results are based on 61 respondents in the US and Europe.
