After reading Jessica’s blog post on “Rogers Alerts”, I’d like to add my analysis to her discussion. On the business side of this new marketing strategy, Rogers has added an additional revenue stream to their existing ones. Other companies, such as Sears Canada, A&W and many more are looking for new ways to directly communicate with their customers, and this marketing strategy is a new, innovative way of doing so. Although the advertisers won’t have access to all of Rogers’ users, any portion of Rogers’ large subscriber base will be a big audience to target. By using this service, companies won’t have to build their own text subscription service.
As competition heats up among Rogers, Bell and Telus, it is important for Rogers to differentiate itself from competitors in the eyes of its customers, whether its their advertising partners or its cell phone service users. This marketing strategy is definitely new to Canada and if implemented correctly by Rogers, they will be first to this market and will have a competing edge against Telus or Bell if they plan to do something similar.