There are two expressions that really hit home for me when it comes to Tucows Insight:
"If you build it, he will come" - Field of Dreams Fame
"If a tree falls in the forest, does anybody hear?" - Bruce Cockburn fame (for me anyway)
The first one isn't so true. We have built lots of things, but people don't always come. And the second, well, if you build something, and you don't tell anyone about it, does it count?
We have this product buried in OpenSRS called "Tucows Insight". It's free, it's for all of our partners, and nobody knows about it. I launched it three years ago, and we made a big splash at the time, but since then we've been quiet about it on the marketing front.
You're probably asking yourself, what is it? It's a pretty darn cool reporting tool. It actually blows away any competitor's reporting tools that I have ever seen for partners (heck, I know I am biased, but....that's my job). It helps partners see their renewal rates, their transfer in/transfer out rates, who they are losing those transfers to, and reporting on all their transactions. Tools like Insight let people see if there is anything wrong with their business.
This fact was brought back to me this week when a partner sang the praises of the tool (sort of), and noted how integral the tool had become to their business. Another partner told me the same. Every day they are checking things like domain name renewal rates, and changing their course accordingly.
It's like getting a checkup. "Oh dear, I've got high cholesterol, guess I better stop eating fries," could instead be, "Wow. I am losing a ton of registrations to <insert slimy registrar here>. I'd better start educating my customers about bogus transfer requests."
So the moral of the story for me is to keep talking about this stuff. Otherwise, no-one will come, and there will be a forgotten tree in the forest of Tucows products. If you're a partner, try it out. Maybe you can get some of the same benefits that our partners are already getting! Maybe your cholesterol will improve too. If you cut out fries, that is. ;)
Kiko is a good example