Reading Time: 4 minutesToday’s digital world requires that all businesses have an online presence. Without that online presence, you lose out on potential clients, advertisement opportunities, the ability to enhance your social media presence, and more. The digital phonebook that connects all of the online activities of businesses and consumers around the globe is the Domain Name System or DNS.
DNS (and domain names in general), provides opportunities for digital marketers to connect with potential clientele and increase cash flow. However, there are crucial best practices that should be followed when engaging in DNS-related marketing strategies.
What Is DNS?
DNS is essentially a directory that translates server domain names into IP addresses. Instead of manually typing in the numeric IP address for every website you want to visit, the DNS automatically converts the site name for you. DNS allows computers and networks to communicate with one another. In addition, DNS also provides services such as verification, authentication, and record configuration.
For example, say you want to visit the website of your favorite café to review their menu. You open your web browser, type the site’s URL, and hit enter. In between the time you press enter and the website loading, the DNS translates the URL name into a numeric IP address. It then directs your browser to that IP address – and the result is the web page you’re looking for. Instead of memorizing thousands of IP addresses just to use the web, DNS acts as a translator for users.
How Is DNS Used in Marketing?
Digital marketers use web-based activities to drive customer engagement, boost brand visibility, and increase cash flow within their company. These strategies include email campaigns, social media engagement, and traditional advertising techniques, as well as combinations of any of these approaches. Reverse DNS lookup can enhance all of these strategies.
You usually have access to analytics and other insights when engaging in web marketing campaigns. These sources often allow you to look up the geographic location and IP addresses of users who engage with your website and web content. By seeing what types of people view your content, you can update your marketing practices. In addition, you can see how your marketing emails are performing and how users engage with content on your website.
Examine Email Delivery
Worried about your marketing emails automatically going to recipients’ spam folders? Understanding how reverse DNS lookup works can help you prevent this from happening. Servers use reverse DNS lookup to determine if an email is spam. If these servers determine your email (and the IP address it comes from) is spam, it is sent to the recipients’ spam folder and you lose potential customers as well as wasted resources for the email campaign.
However, optimizing your DNS so that your emails don’t get flagged for spam requires specialized IT knowledge. Connect with your company’s IT administrator to determine if your emails are going to spam and to optimize your DNS.
Monitor User Activity
DNS tools allow you to see how visitors engage with your website when they visit. You’ll be able to see which sections users tend to frequent the most. In addition, you’ll be able to see if there is any content on your site that is not attracting user attention – for example, if users tend to click on a certain page without staying on your landing page.
Make sure you monitor user activity on your website using reverse DNS lookup tools. If you find that certain pages are ineffective in retaining web traffic, update these pages. If your landing page isn’t generating traffic or if users skip the landing page for another section, update this page to include sought-after information.
In addition, user activity can help you determine what aspects of your business potential customers are attracted to. Say that you run a DJ entertainment service that caters to multiple types of events. You perform a reverse DNS lookup and discover that most users interact with your page on Wedding Services more than your page for School Dances. Based on this data, you might want to put more emphasis on the wedding aspect of your business.
Check Your Rankings
Sometimes, several sites share the same IP address. This usually happens when you have multiple sites related to your business website, such as a forum site and a blog site in addition to a corporate page. While having multiple sites may seem like an innovative idea, this creates competition in search engine results and can penalize your site by giving you a lower ranking in search results.
A reverse DNS lookup can help you identify if another site or group of sites you run have the same IP address as your main site. If a reverse DNS lookup finds that you are sharing an IP address with multiple sites, consolidate your sites into a single domain and provide links to each one from your main page.
Maintain Your Database
If you’ve been in business for a few years, you probably have a long list of go-to contacts for sales outreach and customer engagement. You may have collected the names of thousands of customers to build a mailing list database.
However, email and IP addresses change quite frequently and this contact information can become outdated in as little as a year. Marketing databases become outdated by a rate of 22% per year due to outdated addresses and people unsubscribing from these emails. As a result, your database becomes ineffective in driving marketing campaigns.
Make sure to use reverse DNS lookup tools to generate new leads from customers who are engaging with your content. You can set up tools to automatically generate leads from site traffic and email clicks using DNS lookup technology.
Update Your DNS
Just like your customers’ IP addresses and DNS data is vital to your marketing campaign, your DNS data is important to your customers. If you move servers, get a new website address, or do anything else that affects your DNS, it’s important to update your information immediately. Vizion Interactive can help you update your DNS data when you change your IP address so that your customers always land on your newest content.
Want to learn more about the Domain Name System and other digital marketing strategies to boost your brand? Connect with Vizion Interactive and enlist the services of one of our marketing experts today. We provide expert digital marketing services to businesses looking to boost their brand in SEO, email marketing, analytics, and more.
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