Register.com Inc., a provider of Web domain name registration, has named Impiric, New York, as its first direct marketing agency of record for business worth $20 million.
Seven undisclosed agencies competed for the Register.com account. While there was no incumbent handling direct marketing, Carat, New York, and The Concept Farm, New York, held media and creative responsibilities, respectively, for general advertising.
“We're looking for Impiric to help build our brand profitably, which is very critical,” said David Hirschler, vice president of global marketing at Register.com, New York. “We're looking to grow our brand while having a positive impact on return on investment.”
“Therefore, really having an agency that has experience in database segmentation and direct call-to-action was the only way we feel we could achieve this objective,” Hirschler said.
The Impiric appointment is also meant to support Register.com's plans to expand its services to overseas markets as well as to broaden its offerings for individuals and companies in the United States.
“We're partnering with them on a global scale, and we're going to help them drive their brand wherever our partnership determines that brand should be,” said Derek Stubbs, vice president and account director at Impiric.
Impiric has more than 80 offices in 40 countries. Its services include database, Internet and creative marketing as well as strategic consulting. U.S. billings last year were $1.5 billion.
Register.com joins an Impiric client base that includes IBM Corp., Xerox Corp., Ford Motor Co., Sony Corp., CitiGroup, AT&T Corp., the airline-based Star Alliance and Ericsson.
Impiric initially will service the Register.com account from its New York office, offering help on brand positioning and customer segmentation of Register.com's primary target audience, small and medium-sized businesses.
A key thrust this year will be direct response measures geared to better return on investment. To that end, Impiric will offer database capabilities, interactive services, creative and strategic planning.
Founded in 1994 as a software firm, Register.com graduated to offer services for registration of domain names. It claims to be the first registrar to compete after the Web domain-name registration market was privatized. Network Solutions Inc. held the monopoly before that.
The registrar now has expanded to e-mail services, Web address forwarding, domain management, site building and promotion, domain-name resale and other services.
Register.com has processed more than 3 million Web address registrations across 230 domains. More recently, a RegistryPro joint venture allows the company to create the .pro domain for certified professionals such as lawyers, accountants and doctors.
“We're looking to profitably grow registrations and other products and services,” Register.com's Hirschler said. “There's a couple of things. One's to grow revenue for our brand. The other is to increase customer satisfaction and retention and then improve our economies and reduce acquisition costs.”
It was with this intention that Register.com chose Impiric and direct marketing over traditional advertising.
“At this point in our life cycle, we're not looking to just chase brand awareness,” Hirschler said. “We want our communication to be very call-to-action driven.”
