But I kind of took a step back at this sentence in the reminder:
When renewing your domain(s), consider this: Did you know that you can increase your Search Engine Rankings by registering your domain name for 5 or more years at a time? Although a 5 year registration may seem excessive, search engines such as Google and Alexa appreciate and heavily weigh the longevity and stability of websites. Extending the length of your domain registration will help improve your search engine rank and to allow others to find you more easily!Now, I haven't bothered to corroborate the SEO claim, but it tripped the switch for a small light bulb in my brain. A case could definitely be made for using the WHOIS record for the company's web domain(s) (e.g. acme.com) for trying to get a better sense of a company. Maybe you're about to do business with it; maybe you just want to. Maybe you're a competitor or are trying to become one. Maybe you have a job interview with it. In any case, domain information is just another tool in your belt. Given that much of the information is "free," I think you'd be a fool not to take advantage of it.
It may be a matter of chance in timing, but if the renewal date's waaaay out there, you can make an intelligent guess as to whether the company prefers to invest up front to save money in the long run, or whether it prefers to live in the present. Did the company register the domain under its own name? Or did it register it anonymously? Or was the name registered by a third party, most likely the web designers?
If you have any sense of the various domain registration companies (a.k.a. registrars), it can also help fill in some of the pieces. Is registrar fly-by-night? Or a venus flytrap for the un-savvy? Bargain basement or boutique? Similar questions apply to the company that actually hosts the company's website, with the additional possibility that the company owns the server that hosts the website, which says something else entirely.
If you use a thorough tool like http://whois.domaintools.com (the free version of which rawks, by the bye), you can find out other interesting things about the history of the domain. Has it jumped around or stayed in one place? If the information's worth your coin, you can also find out where and when those changes happened.
Of course, if you're primarily interested in aspects of the company that don't have anything to do with their web strategy, the above will likely be a complete waste of time. But for anyone else, it's a peep through the keyhole at where I/T (particularly the webby bits) fit into their vision of the company. For me, that's very valuable information.
