Business
A potential Achilles heel for M&A deals: why you can’t afford to neglect web domains
Published
1 year agoon
By
admin
By Glenn Hayward, CEO at Com Laude
The percentage of mergers and acquisition transactions has risen sharply in the past year. Partly driven by a recovering economy, the value of global deals in 2021 reached $5.1 trillion, up 34% from 2020 to surpass pre-pandemic levels and reach a five year high. The good news is that the trend suggests another supercharged year for deal-making in 2022 as dealmakers worldwide increasingly look to digitalise their businesses.
However, the primary focus for organisations during this surge in M&A activity is to ensure transactions are completed as smoothly as possible. A consequence of this is that critical digital assets, such as a company’s domain name can often take a backseat, presenting bad actors and cybercriminals with ample opportunity to take advantage of any vulnerabilities that come from changing roles, responsibilities, systems and services.
A company’s domain name portfolio can become the Achilles heel of the M&A process if not handled correctly. In order to mitigate the threats of intellectual property infringement and abuse, reputational damage or cyber-attacks, we’ve outlined some actionable insights around domains for those businesses embarking on M&As.
Account for domain ownership
When a business is going through an M&A, there will inevitably be a consolidation of teams. As responsibilities change hands, domains can often be forgotten about in the transition. This can lead to domain registration rights leaving with the person who originally registered them, or with the registration remaining with an old (now defunct) email address from the acquired company.
Organisations must ensure this handover happens early on to prevent these domains falling through the cracks. Equally, it is crucial that the domain registrant transfers ownership to a group email address at the new entity so that multiple stakeholders are alerted when a domain may be expiring or needs attention. Not only will this give the brand watertight protection but avoiding these slip-ups will raise stakeholder awareness for having a robust domain strategy.
Secure domain names before announcing an acquisition
An M&A is an exciting time, and it’s tempting to shout about the new acquisition and a potential new company name whilst it’s in progress, but businesses cannot afford to get carried away. Cyber-squatters will be ready to jump on domain names that aren’t registered in advance of the announcement, holding them hostage for an extortionate price and causing a serious headache for the new business that now needs to get them back ahead of the official brand launch.
Prior to announcing details of an M&A, businesses need to conduct an audit of their future domain portfolios and ensure that all potential online real estate is spoken for. By registering these domain names in advance, organisations can safeguard against any costly (and ultimately inconvenient) re-acquisitions of the name.
Domain names can cost less than £1, but they can be sold on for hundreds of thousands if they’re desperately needed by a brand. Take the example of TikTok: two friends anticipated that the app would become a popular brand, so they bought the domain tiktoks.com for $2,000 just after TikTok’s launch. TikTok’s parent company offered $145,000 to the pair to buy that domain, however upon their refusal to give it back, the brand was forced into lengthy and costly legal processes for its re-acquisition.
The lesson is clear: stop and think about your domain portfolio and ensure all potential domains are registered and accounted for before you rush to make a very public announcement.
Putting in place a robust domain name strategy
A lack of knowledge both about how vital domains are to business infrastructure and the potential implications that neglecting them during an M&A may have has often been why businesses make mistakes. When domains are held by cyber squatters, the effects can be felt across the entire organisation, from seriously impacting online trading through to phishing scams that target customers and ultimately damage brand reputation.
Small brands need not think they are exempt from being targeted; when they are, the attack could be even more damaging with a smaller pool of funds to combat mistakes. All businesses must remain vigilant and protect themselves against the increasing threats during an M&A.
Listen to the experts
When planning for future business acquisitions, organisations can help to mitigate these issues by ensuring they have a corporate domain portfolio manager on hand to ensure domain portfolios are watertight throughout the transition. With their guiding hand they can advise on the key domains that need to be acquired ahead of time, and ultimately mitigate the substantial costs that can be incurred by needing to get a domain back.
With cyber squatters always on the lookout for a quick buck, businesses going through an M&A need to be one step ahead, covering their back from the start with a clear domain strategy. There are many pieces to the M&A – make sure domains don’t end up being the missing piece that prevents the perfect picture.
Business
How app usage can help brands increase their online revenues and customer retention
Published
1 day agoon
March 23, 2023By
editorial
Arunabh Madhur, Regional VP & Head Business EMEA at SHAREit Group
Brands are continuing to invest heavily in the e-commerce market despite current market and economic challenges – and they need to. Indeed, the current global e-commerce market is valued at around $5.5 trillion. Further to that, estimates show that online retail sales will reach $6.7 trillion by the end of 2023 – and e-commerce making up 22.3% of those sales.
So despite the economic and market climate, businesses must still plan for success and cater to customer demands to make the most of the global e-commerce opportunity.
Mobile apps are key
Mobile apps are now a fundamental component of retail, as they provide customers with a convenient and engaging way to shop from their phones. The past couple of years has been rocket fuel for digital transformation, providing an opportunity for the retail industry to innovate. Whilst global trends continue to point to the user growth of Facebook, TikTok and Instagram, the trends underneath the headlines highlight significant opportunities to drive new customer acquisition, which in turn demands a targeted customer retention strategy from companies.
According to research from Baymard Institute, 69.82% of online shopping carts are abandoned and with demand expected to continue, pressure is growing on retailers to expand current offerings and create personalised experiences to tackle this. One of the big challenges e-commerce companies face, though, is analysing and maximising the behaviour of users, and bringing down the cost of their marketing and engagement against how much is earned through a customer making a purchase.
To meet customer demand, mobile apps offer a variety of features such as push notifications, product recommendations, exclusive discounts and offers, and easy checkout processes, to make the shopping experience easier for customers. By leveraging the power of mobile technology, brands can create an immersive shopping experience tailored specifically to their customer’s needs, and this in turn helps increase customer loyalty, customer return rates, and maximise online revenue.
Re-targeting and re-engaging customers
Brands should focus on re-engaging with returning consumers through a personalised strategy as this can help increase the lifetime value of users, which in turn helps brands bring the cost of their marketing down knowing that brand loyalty has been achieved. According to research from Google and Storyline Strategies study, 72% of consumers are more likely to be loyal to a brand if they offer a personalised experience.
Optimising the online shopping experience is crucial in retaining customers. Today, consumers need a more ‘human’ touch, i.e., smart product suggestions based on buying history & behaviour that helps build a one-to-one relationship between brand and buyer. In particular, push notifications haven’t just enhanced personalisation but also increased app engagement by up to 88%. Push notifications have also proven to get disengaged users back, too, with 65% returning to an app within 30 days of the push notification.
Another strategy to consider is the option of adding buy now pay later (BNPL) options at checkouts for customers. Brands that add the option of financing at the checkout allow customers to spread the cost over time, which according to Klarna has resulted in a 30% increase in checkout conversation rates.
Publisher platforms allow brands to leverage their reach and sticky user base. Especially with open platforms such as SHAREit, which can help e-commerce brands create a strong revenue conversion with higher average order value with unique retargeting and user acquisition solutions. Because users are not just sharing product links, but also sharing e-commerce apps and deals among their community. Users of these publisher platforms are also encouraged to share products and apps through platform activities.
What the future of e-commerce holds for brands
E-commerce is positioning itself as a key facet in retail, and its future. With Advancements in technology, customers can access various products and services worldwide through their smartphones – making shopping more accessible than ever. Brands must put consumers at the heart of everything they do, like never before. Offering incentives and payment options, personalising customers’ experiences and re-engaging them, as well as targeting new customers, in an effective and un-intrusive way, are all ways in which they can influence purchasing decisions and improve retention figures.
Business
Does the middle market have a financial edge?
Published
2 days agoon
March 22, 2023By
editorial
Ilija Ugrinic, Commercial Solutions Director at Proactis
Companies tend to look up the ladder when searching for ways to improve efficiency and business performance. What are larger competitors, or others outside their industry, doing right that they can learn from and implement?
What smart technologies or bright ideas do they have that could create efficiencies for them, too?
As we enter yet another likely volatile year for business, punctuated by recession, should businesses continue to only look up? And could the approach of a slightly smaller business offer more of a competitive edge?
Large corporates tend to pioneer innovation in automation by simple virtue of the resources they have. Home to transformation directors and departments, with the ability to implement large overarching software systems, they pave the way for others and are often the first to digitise their source-to-pay cycle at pace.

Ilija Ugrinic, Commercial Solutions Director at Proactis
While growing businesses understand the merits of full automation, implementing it is often too expensive and it doesn’t bring the rapid realisation of benefits that they need. They need to consider what will bring them the biggest return on investment – and the reality is that those in the middle market don’t necessarily need all the elements of an ‘all-doing’ piece of software. What’s more, without dedicated personnel to project manage a transition, they frequently lack the currency of time to be able to comfortably transform working practices, and take staff with them on the journey, without taking resource from other areas of the business.
For SMEs, digital transformation has never been quite as seismic a shift. Instead, they tend to take a modular approach, employing digital solutions only for particular areas of their finance department, where they need them. This has never been a particularly strategic move. Rather, for a growing business that values quick results and watches their outgoings with greater scrutiny than their larger counterparts, it’s something that suits them better. A modular approach also comes with very little disruption and can be implemented relatively seamlessly into their existing organisational setups.
But while growing businesses are opting for a modular approach because it’s the most cost and time effective option for them, the benefits go far beyond that. The beauty of a modular approach is that it is agile. The last three years – with pandemics, an increasingly challenging climate and shifting geopolitical tensions impacting our global economy – have only served to remind us of how suddenly, and drastically, a business landscape can change. The companies that have weathered the storm are those that have reacted and adapted quickly – those that have been capable of changing the way they do things with little impact on day-to-day operations. A modular approach can offer just that.
Businesses using modular finance technology can integrate small solutions that sync up with the rest of their processes, quickly and seamlessly – and these systems can be integrated into their existing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), too. There’s no restriction of a monolithic or aging piece of software either – finance teams can add and update small solutions to their daily operations without the upheaval of having to replace or update large IT infrastructures or wider working practices within the business to accommodate the new software.
Unrestricted by entrenched and hard-to-change systems, the speed with which SMEs are able to react to market changes is miles ahead. A prompt software add-on to manage risk, or create a quick fix in response to a market shift, can be virtually a knee-jerk reaction. SME’s abilities to bend and flex to today’s world efficiently is seeing them reap the benefits of a modular approach. It’s lean, it’s fast and it’s facilitating their growth with a strong competitive edge. And as some of these companies’ growth propels them into the large corporate sphere, they’re choosing to keep a modular approach to finance. It will certainly be interesting to watch those middle-sized companies which grow to the extent that they find themselves competing in the same space. With no financial remodelling to assume a large ‘all-doing’ piece of software, they’ll be competing against their counterparts with completely different tools in their arsenal.
With technology, working life and business needs continuing to change day to day, we have another year ahead of us that will see companies running to keep pace with each other – and fast-growing companies’ approach to finance could be the silver bullet that enables them to catch up with, and even take on, big enterprises. It might just give them a competitive edge against large corporates in these turbulent times.
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