.SAXO PAVES THE WAY FOR DEMOCRATIZED TRADING FOR ALL

Ian Semey began working for Saxo Bank in 2008 as a freelancer, and became webmaster in 2011. He was attracted to the diversity Saxo Bank offered, as well as the ability to bring stakeholders together from various departments to fill the gaps.

Saxo Bank specializes in connecting traders, investors, and partners to global markets from a single account. They’re authorized and regulated by the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority and part of the Saxo Group. Saxo has built digital platforms to facilitate multi-asset market access and provide clients of all sizes with professionalgrade tools, industry-leading prices, and worldclass service. Their aim is to democratize trading in whatever currency exchange and instrument. It’s a very important initiative for them.

To further that aim, in 2012, Saxo Group applied for a new gTLD. Back then, Saxo had banking licenses in some countries but not all. Unfortunately, Saxo didn’t have the banking licence for key markets such as the United Kingdom, Singapore, and Hong Kong, and therefore couldn’t use the term “bank” as part of their domain name. A bookshop already owned saxo.com, and they thought about trying to acquire it, but it was cost prohibitive. Then the New gTLD Program from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) came along and Saxo saw it as a great opportunity—not only because they could choose their domain name, but more importantly, also have full control of the space. That meant getting the security benefits Saxo and their clients desperately needed because the financial industry is THE target for security breaches of any form.

Saxo Bank Client Testimonial

CSC had the great pleasure to speak with Saxo Bank’s Senior Global Webmaster Ian Semey about what tempted them to apply for a new generic top-level domain (gTLD) back in 2012, the time it took to implement a new global domain policy, and how they’ve been using it successfully over the past years. Saxo Bank achieved a great implementation and managed to simplify processes between IT and Marketing, offered clarity to their customer base through simple and secure communication tools, and enabled sales with clear messaging.

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Almost 10 years since the new gTLD was introduced, Saxo thinks the opportunities are endless for using their gTLD. “As a global webmaster for Saxo Bank, I get the opportunity to think about how to improve, but more importantly, expand our online business for our customers and also for Saxo’s stakeholders,” says Ian. “This means working with all kinds of departments, from IT, Legal, Marketing, HR, and so on.”

Saxo, like every corporation, runs multiple sales and marketing campaigns throughout a year to introduce new products to customers, share thought leadership content, or invite customers to demonstrations. However, those types of campaigns have a short life cycle. Saxo’s Marketing department previously had to regularly request new domains and shortened URLs, which was typically taken care of by IT. Since using the new gTLD, it not only took the burden off IT, but also enabled Saxo to go beyond what was possible before.

“When launching a new campaign, we’re now able to register the domain required within a few hours and then apply a shortened URL, which is easy to pronounce and recognized,” says Ian. “We’re using CSCDomainManager for our registration and a link management platform called Rebrandly for parts of our URL strategy.”

“We launched an SMS marketing campaign targeting future clients on how to transition to the Saxo Bank platform. The combination of owning a domain extension which is short, impactful, and recognizable— plus the link management platform—enabled us to reduce the number of messages we needed to send to each recipient from four to two and led to an overall cost reduction of 60.000 Euros for one campaign.”

When launching a new campaign, we're now able to register the domain required within a few hours and then apply a shortened URL, which is easy to pronounce and recognized. We're using CSCDomainManagerSM for our registration and a link management platform called Rebrandly for parts of our URL strategy.

–  Ian Semey, Senior Global Webmaster

Ian Semey
Our Customers

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