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It’s all about domains… Neha Naik (Radix)
8 Min Cultivating and maintaining critical industry relationships shapes the future trajectory of domain registries and registrars.
Published by
Simone Catania
Date
2024/10/11
The relationship between domain registries and registrars is the backbone of the internet’s naming system. Forging solid relationships and collaborations is crucial to success in this interconnected ecosystem. These entities collaborate to manage vital components of the DNS, ensuring that domain names are accessible and secure.
Neha Naik, VP of Channel Partnerships at Radix, is responsible for nurturing these vital connections in the domain industry. With her 17-year tenure mapping across various industry giants, Neha’s expertise is not just in forming alliances but strengthening the fabric of the domain industry’s network. Neha has been pivotal in enhancing Radix’s partner network and fostering enduring business relationships.
As we delve into this fascinating conversation with Neha, expect to uncover rich insights on how robust industry relationships drive the technical and business strategies of a major registry like Radix!
1 What is your career journey in the domain industry and how did you get involved with Radix?
The world of domains came calling in 2005. I started as a fresh recruit, out of college after having completed my degree in Mass Media and I took up a role with the parent company of Radix, which was Directi back then.
Little did I know I was foraying into a fascinating and omnipresent industry. It impacts almost everything we do online. DNS and domains: Words that not everyone knows but really ought to!
After a few businesses and a few different roles, we decided to explore the registry business and that’s when Radix was born in 2013 – I’m proud to have been part of this journey since then!
2 As a key player at Radix, what does your role entail daily?
My role focuses on the Channel Partnerships side of the business – building, growing and innovating what we do with our partners. Our Channel Partners: registrars, hosting companies, resellers and the entire gamut of domain providers are core to our business. Our goal is to find alignment so we can grow together!
Every day is different. While Radix has been around for over ten years and has grown to almost 10 million domains, we are still very rooted in our desire to be radically different.
Fun fact: The word radical comes from the Latin word Radix, which means the “root”; something that changes, addresses or affects the major essence of something. We’re often referred to as the Radix Radicals and our persistent desire to innovate and do things differently remains at the heart of our operations. That makes life at Radix very interesting!
We’re lucky to be in an industry that allows for personal connection through meetings and conferences throughout the year. We have been fortunate to build lasting relationships with many amazing people. At the core, partnerships are building relationships with people we work with and that is the part of my role that I love the most! Finding genuine connections with people you work with!
3 Radix has risen to become the largest new gTLD registry worldwide. What has been the company’s strategy behind this success?
Radix has always focused on high-quality, broad/generic TLDs with a wide addressable market that resonates with users across verticals. You can see that in the TLDs we manage .online, .store, .site, .tech to name a few. To take that even further, we have a superb team of creative, highly motivated folks who want to see Radix succeed beyond what’s obvious!
In addition to our strong TLDs, Radix has focused on building awareness of them. Each TLD is treated like an individual brand with its own target audience and its own brand essence. Our Brand Managers have been creating TLD awareness in their respective segments. For example, .store with the ecommerce community, .tech with startup founders and .online among SMBs.
TLDs that resonate widely with the target audience, characterized by high awareness and desirability, will become the more apparent choices for consumers. Awareness building begins with us as a registry and then continues through our channel partners.
We’ve also made significant strides in understanding the needs, challenges, goals, and behavior of the actual end users of our domains. Our goal is to create something of value for these users by truly understanding what can help them do more and better!
I credit Radix’s success to the specific TLDs we manage, of course, but more importantly to the team and the vision of what we have set out as our goal in the years to come.
4 What challenges do you face in managing such a vast portfolio of gTLDs?
We have a portfolio of 11 gTLDs and while we have TLDs focused on specific verticals like .store for ecommerce or .tech for startups, we also have our generic TLDs like .online, .site and .website.
One of the biggest challenges we faced earlier was the focus. How do you focus on so many TLDs at the same time? This is why we decided to bring in Brand Managers within our marketing teams, each responsible for a TLD and focused on growing their specific audiences, finding their niches and scaling from there on.
Another challenge common to most registries is that you are not directly connected with the end customer. You are one level separated because they register their domains from a registrar like InterNetX or their domain resellers and not from the registry. This separation makes it harder to understand the customer base and their needs. This understanding is critical to building a sustainable business and you have to launch initiatives to gain an end-user perspective.
There are several upsides to a portfolio registry, though – for starters, you have economies of scale. You get to learn quickly from experiments run by one TLD and apply it to another. Your learnings and your experience are actually manifold. You have so much more data to make decisions and move quickly. You also have the opportunity to build much broader partnerships that could address different audiences of the domain industry.
5 With e-commerce booming, how have TLDs like .store been positioned to benefit online retailers and customers?
We have seen the percentage of ecommerce websites grow to 28%+ of all developed websites. This is a clear sign that e-commerce adoption is steadily increasing. Moreover, we have seen 3x growth in live websites on .store since January 2021, portraying strong adoption of the .store TLD for online businesses. And there is nothing better than a .store that sends a clear signal that you’re a website looking to sell something!
We’ve also seen very good traction on ecommerce platforms like Shopify. The TLD .store is the second highest-selling TLD on their platform after .com!
Adoption from several celebrities and Youtubers has also validated the acceptance and need for the TLD. I could mention the singer Shakira using shakira.store or the band Maroon 5 using maroon5.store for their respective merch stores.
We had an independent agency conduct an SEO-focused study. The study found that businesses using a .store domain benefit from double the visibility compared to other domains and enjoy a 12% higher Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS). Choosing a .store domain could significantly boost your sales!
There are distinct benefits for calling out what your online presence is for and .store accentuates that very well!
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6 What trends have you observed in TLD profitability and how does Radix prioritize investment in different domains?
The premium domains model we follow is a high-high model, which means these high-value, high-quality names register and renew at premium pricing, ranging from $100s to $1000s annually.
According to Radix Premiums report 2023, we’ve grown over 25%+ YoY with over $4.8M in premium sales in H2 2023. These registrations see a stellar renewal rate of 57% on the first time and 80%+ on the subsequent years. It truly showcases the model’s success and the value these names provide users.
Some of our premium name success stories include the likes of online food delivery giant Doordash using order.online, self-driving technology company Aurora, using aurora.tech, having raised $4.2B in funding to date and several more.
7 What is an example of a success story involving a specific TLD or campaign that exceeded your expectations?
Radix has been involved in several end-customer awareness campaigns across extensions like .online, .store, .tech and others over the last several years.
One notable campaign is the integrated, multi-activation partnership with the world’s biggest influencer, Mr. Beast, who has a collective social following of over 400M users.
While Mr. Beast switched his online merch store to mrbeast.store, a video partnership announcing the .store partnership has garnered over 229Mn views to date and counting. This partnership not only resulted in spreading awareness of .store with end users but also helped .store gain additional exposure with several other social media influencers globally.
