ENS Marketing Research Pilot Episode: ENS Econometrics

[accessor.eth]

@danch.quixote

So, for us, following a sharp increase, a decline in sales is only a reduction in profits, to which we can turn a blind eye, based on our values. And for such a person, this is a loss of emotional or monetary investment, which he is not able to compensate for with values due to their absence. Having lost faith in the value of the product, such people not only begin to perceive it as a tool of speculation, but they also transmit this position to the environment, creating a toxic image of the product, and this is the main danger

I’m not entirely sure what this means, could you provide an example? As a decentralized service and protocol, there really is not a provable solution to hinder speculative domainers. There isn’t much ENS will implement to combat this as it would start to detract from ownership infringement.

I would recommend to replace ‘sale(s)’ with ‘registration(s)’ as the cost to acquire the right to ownership and possession of an ENS name is simply a fee that is forwarded to funding ENS development and supporting the DAO, it’s contributors as well as greater native Ethereum ecosystem initiatives.

I want to re-iterate that decentralized identity is a choice. Yes, there should be an awareness to what it offers. Quite frankly, I don’t think there is a better marketing convention that markets ENS names than putting .eth in your twitter. As far as I am aware, that was completely organic and has never been a requirement of anything or has any persons persistently directed others to do so in any official capacity.

[danch.quixote]

@accessor.eth

I’m not entirely sure what this means, could you provide an example? As a decentralized service and protocol, there really is not a provable solution to hinder speculative domainers. There isn’t much ENS will implement to combat this as it would start to detract from ownership infringement.

I am in no way suggesting that it is necessary to in any way restrict people who are subject to speculative attraction from purchasing an ENS product. This is impossible in any case.

As an example, the yellow and red periods on the very first chart. Yellow is an influx of high speculative demand, since nothing more can be described, since the practical value of the product did not change at this time.
Red is disappointment in speculative value, from which we get negativity that people spread to the public.

In order to accurately understand that such an effect exists, it is necessary to conduct an analysis of sentiments, which is what I can do in the future.

@accessor.eth

I would recommend to replace ‘sale(s)’ with ‘registration(s)’

Of course, the term sales is used more to diversify the narrative.

@accessor.eth

I don’t think there is a better marketing convention that markets ENS names than putting .eth in your twitter

Can we say that all the people who share our values (if we really target them exclusively) read Twitter and meet people with the .eth tag there? Isn’t it necessary to unite like-minded people, and not exist in a small, somewhat closed group? Even if we proceed not from commercial, but from ideological intentions?

Let me give you an example from my life. I now live in Yerevan, like hundreds of thousands of people with a Russian passport. Many of them, like me, adhere to libertarian or even anarchist ideas, which arose among them as a countercultural phenomenon to the existing situation in Russia. Therefore, there is a possibility that they adhere to the ideas of decentralization, anonymity and confidentiality. They, like me, use cryptocurrency (mainly they operate stablecoins through centralized exchanges). But at the same time, according to my personal observations, they know nothing about ENS. They mostly don’t use Twitter, probably also because it’s a fairly centralized platform.

And there are hundreds and thousands of such communities around the world. We really don’t want to at least make our presence felt by continuing to rely on an audience from the US and these countries?

Globally, I do not agree that ENS relies solely on organic growth, because advertising is bought from the influencers on Twitter. But since such work is being carried out, why not do it systematically and efficiently?

[accessor.eth]

So what do you suggest?

[danch.quixote]

Most part of this research is just a form of signaling that there are problems and a way of describing the current situation. There are not very many practical insights in the first two chapters. However, they do provide a basis from which to explore the subject of ENS’s marketing success.

This study uses publicly available metrics and free tools.

If I am provided with the resources I need, described in the “proposals” part, I will be able to perform the next episode, which will be completely focused on studying the actions of the company.

answering question, I offer a list of recommendations that can be used to modernize ENS global marketing strategy.

For example, if I was given the right resources to write

@danch.quixote

3.2 Segmented Marketing ROI Analysis

And

@danch.quixote

3.3 Qualitative Analysis of Marketing Aspects

I could infographically describe which ENS marketing campaigns were worth repeating and which were worth abandoning.

If I have access to resources for this chapter:

@danch.quixote

3.4 Target audience analysis

I will be able to analyze the ENS demographics that I wrote about in the last post. With the help of the recommendations in this chapter, we can diversify the community by country of origin, age and gender, for example.

You can also add sentiment analysis to this (for this I need the Twitter API V2), or the analysis of Web3-specific metrics you mentioned above (for this I would first need to at least determine what tools I might need).

[accessor.eth]

@danch.quixote

we can diversify the community by country of origin, age and gender,

Honestly; my opinion and maybe others would agree, I don’t think demographics are important at all. Demographics seem to do more harm in the grand scheme of things. They set up social constructs for discrimination and favoritism by proxy. It’s all just unhealthy to me.

If someone wants to display where they are from then that is a personal decision they make and should not influence ENS marketing strategy at all. Especially the gender demographic. The only area where gender should be measured is through medical insurance and ENS isn’t doing that. Otherwise it’s not my business or your business as to what gender ‘insertgenderhere.eth’ identifies as. Again, personal opinion but I do think that many here would agree.

The best way to gauge sentiment would require an algorithm that measures data points on chain. Anything off chain is intrusive and should be off limits. I mean you are free to do what you want to do. You mention qualitative and quantitative data and Twitter isn’t the right place or quantifiable data because there are too many discrepancies that would result in adjusted data, which is inaccurate. All the data needed is on chain to measure sentiment, that’s the beauty of the EVM ledger. I just don’t think this traditional corporate reporting approach is aligned with web3 decentralizers.

[danch.quixote]

It seems to me that to some extent we do not understand each other. If I tell you that the majority of ENS users are Americans 18-25 years old who associate themselves with the male gender, could this be considered discrimination, or a reflection of real factors?

I am just calling for differentiation from such an average category and trying to expand to non-US citizens who are over 25 years old and have a gender identity other than male.

[accessor.eth]

No, it doesn’t constitute discrimination. However, we should question the purpose behind collecting such data. Why does it matter whether someone identifies as male or female in a system where this information serves no practical function? What’s the significance of knowing a user’s age and gender in a decentralized community striving for independence from institutions that exploit such data for financial gain?

This is where concerns about invading privacy emerge.

Let’s consider an example with the following address: 0xaDe039…

0xaDe039… logs into a decentralized application (dApp) that requests their gender. 0xaDe039… responds with “male.” The dApp employs analytics tools and captures the IP address from the submitted form. Now, 0xaDe039… and IP address 10.0.0.1 are linked together. IP address 10.0.0.1 is tied to a server known as west-01. It’s worth noting that west-01 exclusively serves a specific geographic region. As a result, we now have knowledge that 0xaDe039… is a male user connected to IP address 10.0.0.1 in the region labeled as XYZ. Then we discover a Twitter profile that references the address 0xaDe039… User 0xaDe039… has not disabled their geolocation privacy settings on Twitter, leading to the logging of all their locations.

This example illustrates why I believe probing for such information is unnecessary. Additionally, this type of data can often deviate from reality, leading to inaccuracies.

If this information is not stored on the blockchain and fails to provide consistent and accurate data, it becomes futile and can potentially be exploited for malicious targeting. I have no desire to be a target. I’d rather not be considered a ‘targeted’ consumer of any kind, to be completely honest. Why should someone else profit from my identity attributes in a network that upholds values against the involuntary collection of demographic and protected category information?

In my experience, I’ve never received compensation from anyone who used my data without my explicit and transparent consent.

Once again, this represents my personal viewpoint. I encourage others to share their thoughts, whether in agreement or disagreement.

perfect example. well… almost perfect.

[danch.quixote]

You gave a very good example and I agree with it. But I suggest a slightly different way.

1. Collect data not from the blockchain, but from website traffic. The ethnic composition and other demographic data will always be proportionately equal to what we have among those who register a name.
2. Receive them in anonymized form, in the form of a percentage, so as not to violate the privacy rights of individuals.
3. Use them not for targeted actions, such as targeted contextual advertising, but to diversify the platforms through which we distribute and the methods by which we conduct social networks.

A little about the so often mentioned contextual advertising. Setting it up for personal data such as region, gender, age, financial situation, and so on is wrong, I agree.

But I think they will agree with me that if a person Googles about web3 domains, he should learn about our existence. For some search keywords, for example ‘web3 domains’, the ENS website will be located in 25-35 place in the search query, depending on the region selected in Google.

Yes, if you enter, for example, ‘eth domains’, then the ENS site will be in 1-3 place. But aren’t we promoting that ENS is not just .eth?

If you do not take into account the delivery of advertising, for example using DuckDuckGo, the situation will not change much. This also means that we generally do not work with search algorithms, unlike, for example, our competitors.

[accessor.eth]

yeah i would love to see results in this order :

ens.domains
docs.ens.domains
discuss.ens.domains

i’m not sure how that is controlled perhaps someone else may know.

[slobo.eth]

@danch.quixote

Required Resources:

Professional tools for analyzing website traffic, with segmentation by country, age, gender.

Is the above what you are looking for? If so, this is not something the ecosystem is set up to provide.

Is there a request that I may have missed that you’d like guidance on?

[danch.quixote]

I’m sorry, but I still couldn’t figure out who at ENS is involved in marketing in the broad sense. Should I contact Meta-Gov, Public goods or ENS Labs?

Here is a list of what I need:

Description and budget spent on specific marketing campaigns. This is just a metric; no third-party resources need to be used.

Web analytics tools. This is either free Google Analytics, in order to use it I need you to give me access to analytics reports. Or paid tools, for example SimilarWeb ($400/mo.).

SEO analytics tools. Again, it could be free Google Ads and Google Search Console that I need to have access to.

Twitter analytics tools for sentiment analysis. There are no good alternatives to Twitter API v2. I need either a monthly subscription ($100/mo.) or a Bearer token, which the SMM team quite possibly has.

To sum it up, I either need funding or access.

[slobo.eth]

ENS marketing is handled by ENS Labs; the director of marketing is @sadaf.eth.

Some organizations engage in marketing that helps their business like ens.vision. They do not have financial support from the Ecosystem WG.

The Ecosystem WG focuses on supporting projects like eth.limo, 1w3.io, and namesys.xyz.

[danch.quixote]

Aight, thanks.
Hey, @sadaf.eth ! Can we discuss providing access to Google analytics reports (GSC, .Analytics, .Ads)? Could you provide information on advertising expense reports and campaigns conducted? Does your team have an OAuth v2 API on Twitter and can you share the Bearer Token?

[nick.eth]

@danch.quixote

It seems to me that to some extent we do not understand each other. If I tell you that the majority of ENS users are Americans 18-25 years old who associate themselves with the male gender, could this be considered discrimination, or a reflection of real factors?

I am just calling for differentiation from such an average category and trying to expand to non-US citizens who are over 25 years old and have a gender identity other than male.

@accessor.eth

No, it doesn’t constitute discrimination. However, we should question the purpose behind collecting such data. Why does it matter whether someone identifies as male or female in a system where this information serves no practical function? What’s the significance of knowing a user’s age and gender in a decentralized community striving for independence from institutions that exploit such data for financial gain?

At the very least, that would tell us that there are a lot of potential ENS users who aren’t being reached, and we should do something about that. For that reason alone it seems worth measuring.

[accessor.eth]

Maybe, I judt don’t see gender needing to be measured of the goal is to be a universal domain naming system for devices that aren’t gendered. ( for now at least )

Whoever figures out how to build marketing campaigns to reach people who will be interested in ENS before they know they are interested in ENS will be knighted.

Perhaps a carefully trained; self-learning dynamic LLM data pipeline analytic initiative.

[danch.quixote]

@accessor.eth

Whoever figures out how to build marketing campaigns to reach people who will be interested in ENS before they know they are interested in ENS will be knighted.

That is the main goal!

[danch.quixote]

As an example, I decided to do a quick demographic analysis to show how we can work with depersonalized data and get practical value out of it for web3. It is worth noting that the data is raw, does not cover a long period of time, and is not detailed.

ENS demographics (excluding non-binary people):

ENS

The data looks fairly homogeneous, as the percentage of women is only 20% and the age groups are unevenly distributed. Are ENS domains a product for men aged 25-34? I think, in line with web3’s values, no.

Someone says, “Well, this is just the specifics of the industry.” I will answer - yes, this is true, but only partially. Let’s take a look, for example, at the same distribution from our competitor – Unstoppable Domains.

UD

As you can see, their indicators are much closer to uniform, which means that the specifics of web3 have nothing to do with it. It would be a little foolish to assume that the ability to register a domain indefinitely has any significant impact on the target audience, which means that it is not a matter of the specifics of the product.

Then why is this happening? One reason is certainly that they have more decentralized traffic sources. While ENS uses 4 platforms, UD uses 10, although not all of them are suitable for us.

ENS

UD

What practical recommendations can be given based on this simple analysis? For example, use Instagram too as a means of dissemination/information, which is more gender-neutral and has a more age-diverse audience than Twitter (UD use Instagram).

IG

Don’t like Instagram because it’s more centralized and less anonymous than Twitter? Well, then you can invest more resources in the development of the YouTube direction, which also has more differentiated audience.

YT

This is an example of how you can increase both ENS audience and decentralization at the same time. But it’s worth noting that diversifying traffic sources is just a drop in the ocean of practical insights.

[danch.quixote]

There is a tricky problem that hinders the development of this initiative.

ENSLabs in general and @sadaf.eth in particular are responsible for marketing. At the same time, the lab does not control or finance DAO initiatives.

At the same time, the Ecosystem (@Ecosystem_Stewards) and Public Goods (@PublicGoods_Stewards) WGs are responsible for supporting DAO initiatives, but excluding those related to marketing.

The question arises, who is the person or group of people who would resolve issues of funding, adjusting technical assignments, and monitoring the work performed regarding my initiative?

If you have any guesses, please give me a hint.

[danch.quixote]

I receive comments that the content of my research is too lengthy, and in a short summary I was not able to properly convey the main ideas.

So I decided to highlight issues that I hope will reveal to the public that the current situation is dangerous and could result in a product that so many people have worked and are working on falling into public oblivion.

What is the problem?

ENS name registrations have been falling continuously for a year now. This is the first time we are faced with such a situation. There is no cycle here, we are just falling down.

And what? The trend has a logarithmic function, which means we won’t fall further, which means we can stay at the same values for some time and develop organically, right?

The number of registered names DEPENDS on market conditions. So much so that we can say that, at best, an average of 60% of registrations are a derivative of general market movements, which can be called the prevalence of speculative interest.

But speculative interest is not always bad, because it helps development and can be a good driver?

Yes! But only when it is continuous; otherwise, they lose interest in us as quickly as they gain interest, which is why our positioning and identity suffer and a negative image appears.

Okay, but the bull run is coming soon, and this means that our sales will go up…

The main problem is the nature of the dependence of the number of sales on the market, because it is exponential. Yes, we will greatly increase the average sales level when everyone is again interested in crypto and web3. But we will absolutely collapse along with the market. What if the bull market does not start, but there is another crash that no one expects? In this case, we risk finding ourselves in a catastrophic situation in which the only thing we can count on is a miracle.

It is also worth considering the fact that we are tied not to the cryptocurrency market, but to the NFT market (the indicators of which I did not take because they are not very informative). Like the NFT market, ENS name registrations lag the crypto market by 25-46 weeks. The presence of a lag in correlation with the crypto market will only tell us that for the next at least 25 weeks after the start of the expected bull market, registrations will remain at the same level, if nothing is done, of course.

The DAO still has a lot of money, we can survive a dozen crypto winters!

Representatives of all major projects that have ever gone bankrupt probably thought the same thing. I understand that the goal of ENS is not to earn money, but without them, unfortunately, it will not be possible to develop and support the product.

You don’t understand, organic development is our way. We will develop the product, and people will naturally become interested in it.

This is what worries me the most. What I’m trying to convey is that wishful thinking is DANGEROUS. We don’t live in a decentralized world where people subscribe to modern web3 values. We are just in the beginning. And who better than ENS to build such a future?

The actual value of a product and its promotion multiply each other. I won’t tell you a big secret - if you don’t pay attention to marketing, no one will notice the value of your product. Is this really the situation you would like to find yourself in after 6 years of development? Promotion is not needed to sell more, but to spread and move the world towards mass adoption.

All your proposed classic methods of promotion are nonsense that we would not want to associate with our product.

If this is true – ok. In my mini demographic study, I made the case that the ENS community is exclusive and closed in several ways. And the blame for this lies, among other things, on the chosen strategy of existing only in its Information bubble. If you don’t want to use contextual advertising, let’s at least diversify the channels of communication with humanity. And this is just one of hundreds of steps we can take.

With the big picture in hand, we can get rid of the speculative image and attract millions of people who truly value the product. If we leave this unattended, there is a possibility that the next crypto market crash will be the last for the ENS product.

In closing, everything I say is pretty obvious. This could be understandable to you, because recently ENS has acquired a significant number of haters. This was also probably clear to the management, because a marketing department was established. This was clear to me, but I still decided to write this study to clearly show that ENS actually has problems and the potential for critical situations. I propose to use a systematic approach in solving these problems.

[garypalmerjr]

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