Tips for hosting and domain providers to improve email user experience

A couple of weeks ago, I attended the virtual edition of Cloudfest and ended up watching the Verisign presentation “Understanding Cloud growth using domain names” presented by Andy Simpson. 

One particular slide caught my attention, where Andy talked about how an initial domain purchase for email use can lead to the attachment of hosting packages and associated products.

Let’s not forget that despite customers purchasing a domain from your company, they can choose to purchase an email solution from someone else, which is why I’d like to talk about actions that companies can take to proactively improve email user experience, so they don’t lose their customers.

1. Offer choice 

Creating your own email app is relatively easy but creating and maintaining a great app that consumers will be happy with is challenging. There are plenty of companies out there entirely focused on providing a great email experience and ready to partner with service providers.

We can separate email buyers into two categories:

• Simple Solution:  The user might use the software for business purposes, or they might not. The solution needs to be affordable and easy to use and doesn’t require additional features. Providers such as Atmail, Zimbra, Rackspace, Axigen or Titan mail are great at this.

• Productivity suites: These go beyond just email. Additional features or collaboration tools are the keys here. These tend to be the one-stop shop to run your business on the cloud, including document editors and video chat software. Best examples would include Zoho, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Open-Xchange, etc.

2. Adding email migration

Why does migration matter? More than 75% of business email customers are what we call very-small-business with 1-10 seats. VSBs typically do not have IT admin and are almost always migrating from consumer emails such as Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook. 

By allowing the end-user to have all their email from the start, in their new inbox, they can concentrate on what matters: Running their business. 

Ideally, there should be migration available for two use cases:

• Consumer email to business email 
• B2B email migration - some users will start with a more affordable option before they scale to a size where they can benefit from productivity suites.

At ShuttleCloud we help various partners including Gmail and Comcast with user-friendly email migration solutions. Here is how hosting company One.com utilises our migration solution: video

CONCLUSION

Offering email products alongside the purchases of domain names is clearly a no-brainer. However, to successfully address customers’ needs and to up-sell additional products requires a focus on customer experience.