Domain names may be big business, but how can you be sure you’re fully exploiting the potential of the Internet? Stewart Tyson, head of IP at Royal Mail, explains how the group developed a more strategic approach to its Internet presence by realigning its domain name portfolio in 2006

These days, all businesses, large or small, need a website virtually as much as they need a factory or office. Websites help to create a company’s identity, strengthen its brand and bring all of its services and resources to the customer in one location, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

But although domain names cost relatively little to register, managing a portfolio of URLs can be a time-consuming and often confusing process. Which domain names should you register? How can you protect them from infringement? What is the best way of managing the process internally?

Without a comprehensive strategy to support its online presence, a company may not be deriving the full benefits of its domain name registrations, as Stewart Tyson, head of IP at the Royal Mail Group, is well aware. In 2006, he spearheaded the restructuring of Royal Mail’s entire domain name portfolio strategy.

‘Royal Mail wanted to build a more strategic approach to its domain names rather than just maintaining its registrations,’ Stewart explains. ‘We realised that our domain names were an increasingly powerful tool in terms of marketing, brand protection and consumer sales, and as such we needed to treat them in the same way as we would any other IP asset.’

However, realigning the management of domain names invariably necessitates a change in thinking at corporate level, especially for a company with a large number of registrations. Royal Mail has 950 domain names in total, including well known URLs such as www.royalmail.com, lesser-known web addresses that link to the official corporate websites and defensive registrations that cover common misspellings of the company and its brand.

Building a business strategy
One way that Royal Mail managed the change was to assign ‘domain name
champions’ to each side of the business at the first stage of the process. These champions were called upon to educate and advise their respective departments at each stage of the domain name restructuring process.

‘Royal Mail Group is divided into a number of business units,’ says Stewart, who himself runs the IP aspects of the Group’s three main brands: Royal Mail, Parcel Force and Post Office Limited. ‘Interlinking each department was key to our domain name strategy. All our champions were members of the digital team, so they were already well-versed in the potential value of the Internet. However, by giving them responsibility for a section of the domain name portfolio as well, we also ensured that each section of our domain name portfolio was being championed by its relevant department, not just in the team itself, but in the business as a whole.’

All our employees need to understand how our domain names relate to the greater field of IP. They need to see the domains we own, and those we don't, and understand how each links to our patent and trademark rights

This isn’t the first time that the IP department at the Royal Mail Group has assigned stakeholders across the business to drive and maintain its IP. The Group also follows a similar process for its trademark and patent registrations.

For Stewart, it’s important to connect all aspects of the Group’s IP between departments and categories of IP. But for this to be successful, communication and access to core information is key.

‘All our employees need to understand how our domain names relate to the greater field of IP,’ explains Stewart. ‘They need to see the domains we own, and those we don’t, and understand how each links to our patent and trademark rights. After all, it would be foolhardy to launch a new product or brand without first checking that the relevant domain name was available.’

A client of CPA since 2002, the Royal Mail Group chose to use CPA’s domains extranet to consolidate its domain name portfolio and encourage  communication within the business. ‘We liked the look of CPA’s system,’ says Stewart. ‘It enables access to core information quickly and helps us to reorder and interlink our IP and individual business units. Because it is web-based, it’s also incredibly easy to access and use. All we needed was a quick training session and we were up and running.’

Benchmarking progress Assessing the success of a domain name strategy and keeping on top of new challenges can be a struggle for any business, which is why a key aspect of Stewart’s domain name strategy is education and assessment. ‘We’ve still got some learning to do to keep on top of the latest policies and challenges to our domain names,’ says Stewart. ‘However, as well as tracking orders, CPAs extranet provides updates and consolidates information for reporting purposes. We’re now looking into using more of its reporting functions to help benchmark our progress.

‘The first stage was a building block for the future of domain name management. Now we’ve established and aligned our strategy, we can begin to look into developing it for the future and disseminating our strategy across the business,’ he concludes.

For information on how CPA’s domains extranet could help your business, visit www.cpaglobal.com or contact domains@cpaglobal.com


This article first appeared in IP Review, issue 17

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