Co-creating with customers: The path to building a high NPS email product

khushbusangoi

Updated on April 25, 2024

Post Baner

Name.com is one of the world’s leading domain registrars. Founded in 2003, Name.com provides domain registration, web hosting, and other online services to individuals and businesses to help small businesses grow online. It is evolving to become the one-stop shop for the best available SaaS solutions to help its customers succeed online. With rapidly changing technology, their customers expect offerings that can go with what the Name.com brand is known for – “Best quality” solutions.

Like many other global web presence providers, Name.com was facing challenges with their legacy email offering, stemming from:

 

  • Poor uptime and outdated user experience are major global pain points for email hosting providers.
  • Poor customer NPS and increasing customer churn: Outdated email services fail to meet customers' growing expectations regarding user experience, product functionality, and enhancements in the fast-paced digital world, resulting in low Net Promoter Scores (NPS) and increasing customer churn.
  • Stagnant revenue stream: Companies must continuously find new ways to meet aggressive growth and revenue targets. Despite being a widely used product, a poor email offering doesn't let providers tap into the full potential of email revenue.
  • Support strain: One of the most common support requests pivots around email troubles, amplifying support expenses.
  • Loss of brand reputation: As email services are primarily sold under the company's brand name, any disruptions, downtimes, security breaches, or poor performance reflect poorly on the web presence providers' brand reputation, impacting their overall reputation.

 

After extensive evaluation across multiple providers, Name.com zeroed in on Titan considering the following:

  • Titan is explicitly developed for web presence providers' customers as a modern cloud-native solution with class-leading apps and robust email service.
  • Titan is the highest-quality email product available in the market, as evidenced by Titan’s G2 ratings and NPS scores.
  • Results delivered by Titan to increase revenue by >2x across the web presence providers offering Titan.
  • Titan’s partnership-oriented approach, rather than a traditional vendor-customer model, offers a win-win relationship.

To be sure of the capabilities and commitments Titan offered, Name.com started selling Titan for its new customers in Jan 2022. Within 1 year of launch – Name.com saw exceptional results with the Titan partnership:

  • 4x Boost in Email Signups
  • $1.1 increase in revenue per domain sold to retail customers by bundling Titan with domains.
  • 30% fewer email-related support tickets, leading to a drastic reduction in support costs.

With the results seen for its new customers, Name.com wanted to expand the partnership and migrate its thousands of existing email accounts to Titan. However, despite the evident need for change, like most other web presence providers, Name.com was hesitant to migrate due to the daunting task of email migration and risks such as high customer churn, data loss, and potential DNS setup complications.

Titan team made the migration process seamless for Name.com and handheld Name.com during the entire migration process.

Before we dive into the migration process, here’s a 2 min video where Carlos Armada, Product Lead at Name.com, talks about the impact and outcomes of their partnership with Titan.

The 6 principles of a Titan-managed migration

With its unique migration philosophy, Titan promised a seamless transition to address Name.com ‘s challenges head-on. Titan migration promise is built on six pillars:

  1. Zero Touch
    Minimalist approach, requiring almost no intervention from Name.com .
  2. Zero Downtime
    Ensuring a seamless switch between email providers and service availability throughout the migration with no downtime period.
  3. Zero Data Loss
    A guarantee to retain all customer data.
  4. Zero Churn Migration
    Retention of all users through a seamless migration process.
  5. Maximum Customer Delight
    Ensure customers get value immediately.
  6. Maximum Partner Satisfaction
    No hidden costs for the Partner or the Customer. Working with the partners hand-in-hand throughout the migration process and minimizing the resource commitment from the Partner side.

The Titan-managed migration that delivers results​

As with all Titan-managed migrations, Titan undertook the following approach.

  • Ownership and line of sight

The Titan team took project management ownership and created a detailed project plan encompassing the full scope of the project with clear ownership visibility and timelines between both teams.

 

  • Minimal resource commitment required from Name.com

The Titan team created all the necessary artifacts to maximize user acceptance and make the experience painless and delightful.

  • Technical ownership and delivery

The Titan team took project management ownership and created a detailed project plan encompassing the full scope of the project with clear ownership visibility and timelines between both teams.

The Titan-managed migration that delivers results​

Titan’s migration was a testament to efficiency. Name.com achieved a comprehensive transition with minimal intervention from the Name.com side. 

The entire migration was completed within 1.5 months, with most of the heavy lifting done from Titan’s side:

  • Only one project manager and a single engineering resource were required from Name.com, each dedicating two weeks of effort.
  • Titan spearheaded the initiative by forming a specialized migration team, including a migration tech owner, product manager, strategic partner manager, and other crucial roles.
  • Titan took the reins, devising the entire project plan and technical specifications and ensuring transparent customer communication. This proactive approach eliminated ambiguities for Name.com.

Communication: the key to winning customers over​

Central to the successful migration was effective communication:

  • Customers were kept in the loop, with detailed timelines for every migration phase.
  • For the users impacted by DNS changes (where Name.com did not control DNS) or who need to change any configurations in 3rd party clients, timely communications were sent to users in both source and destination systems via appropriate mediums (Emails and in-app hooks).
  • A custom pricing model ensured no sudden spikes in costs for customers until their next renewal. This allowed users to familiarize themselves with Titan's offerings without being impacted financially.
  • Comprehensive FAQs were curated to answer user queries about the migration preemptively.
  • Specific steps requiring customer involvement were highlighted and communicated promptly.
  • To address any post-migration concerns, Titan offered dedicated support around the clock.

Sample communication plan created for Name.com

A landing page was created for Name.com customers to get migration acceptance.

Go-time: the four steps to a successful migration

Ensuring customers are retained on the platform post-migration is one of the most essential considerations in any migration. Our migration methodology ensured that we would do a zero-user impact migration for users to ensure 100% of customers continue with Titan post-migration.

  • Step 1: Data Analysis
  • <span data-metadata=""><span data-buffer="">DNS (MX, SPF, DKIM, DMARC)
  • <span data-metadata=""><span data-buffer="">Default clients vs 3rd party clients used (through IMAP/POP3)
  • <span data-metadata=""><span data-buffer="">Secured vs. unsecured connections used
  • <span data-metadata=""><span data-buffer="">Languages used
  • <span data-metadata=""><span data-buffer="">Any unsupported features in Titan that are currently being used in the source system 
  • <span data-metadata=""><span data-buffer="">Disk space usage, feature usage, etc 
  • <span data-metadata=""><span data-buffer="">Step 2: Cohort design
  • <span data-metadata=""><span data-buffer="">Different user cohorts were created based on the data analysis, and a custom migration plan was created for each cohort.<span data-metadata="">
  • <span data-metadata=""><span data-buffer="">Step 3: Migration<span data-metadata="">
  • Cohort-wise migration using Titan’s native migration platform, capable of throughput of 1,000GB/hour
  • <span data-metadata=""><span data-buffer="">No manual DNS changes
  • <span data-metadata=""><span data-buffer="">No password changes
  • <span data-metadata=""><span data-buffer="">Step 4: Commercial communication<span data-metadata="">
  • <span data-metadata=""><span data-buffer="">Transparent commercial communication to avoid commercial surprises: Minimal commercial impacts (immediate pricing changes, SKU changes) were made, and customers were communicated with all commercial impacts and value propositions of the migration to ensure no commercial surprises leading to customer churn.

<span data-metadata=""><span data-buffer="">Data Integrity with Zero Data Loss

On user acceptance, all critical user data was meticulously moved to Titan:

  • Comprehensive email data: From folders to the read state of emails
  • Calendars and scheduled entries
  • User contacts
  • User-specific settings, including aliases, rules, signatures, Forwarders, vacation responders, etc.

This ensured that no user suffered any loss of vital information.

<span data-buffer="">The results in numbers<span data-metadata="">

Through meticulous planning, Titan ensured users don’t have to face any interruptions or downtime due to the migration:

  • Users simply logged into the new Titan environment on the stipulated day, finding all their new emails, calendars, contacts, email rules, and all other data created in the source platform in Titan without any downtime.
  • The technical strategy was solid. All user data was transferred before the Mail Exchange (MX) switch.
  • A continuous differential migration was deployed post-MX switch. For 2 weeks after the switch, any email mistakenly directed to the old email service due to DNS propagation delays was also forwarded to Titan. Hence, not a single email was missed.

he migration to Titan proved remarkable, with impressive statistics that speak to our team’s unwavering dedication to excellence.

 

Post-Migration Benefits with Titan

Through meticulous planning, Titan ensured users don’t have to face any interruptions or downtime due to the migration:

  • Revenue Boost:
    Name.com unlocked new revenue avenues thanks to the enhanced email service.
  • Customer Satisfaction:
    Titan's reliability and user-centric approach drastically increased user satisfaction.

Name.com and Titan: Pioneering a New Era of Email Excellence

The partnership between Name.com and Titan exemplifies the impact of modern email services on digital communication, improving customer satisfaction and revenue generation. This collaboration resulted in a flawless migration, setting the industry standard and providing a robust, resilient, and user-centric email service.

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