Well, that took long enough.
But at last, the Rogers Wireless home page is updated to at least hint at the biggest news they’ve had all year:
But it’s still not linked to anything – which is kind of crazy.
To get a sense of the magnitude of Monday’s iPhone announcement for Rogers, have a look at what it’s done to traffic on their site:
That, friends, is a big bump – the kind you really ought to be prepared for if you know about it in advance. But even when it hits you by surprise, you should be ready to surf the wave.
Have some big news? Something people are salivating over, something they’ll want to know more about the moment there’s something to tell them? Even if you have no details at the moment, ask for their names and email addresses so you can talk to them later.
A list of thousands of qualified prospects must be worth the effort of putting together a form.
Or is there something I’m missing about Rogers’ business model?
You hit the nail on the head Rob! Rogers marketing department should be fired. They had all the advance warning they needed by knowing how popular the iPhone is in the US. Even if they are not ready to share exact details of the program, they could at least build more hype, conversation, and relationship with their potential new customers. The sad thing is that it probably won’t effect them terribly in sales because the brand people are waiting to connect with in July is not Rogers, but Apple.
Poor Rogers…they’ve pissed off the overwhelmingly eager and product-hungry audience that wouldn’t have given them the time of day before now. And that’s BEFORE they all sign onto their three year contracts
An update: the teaser is finally linked to something…
…the page of Rogers Wireless news releases in their Investor Relations section.
I can only assume someone told their interactive department, “Link it to something. Anything. The terms of service agreement. The stock price chart. Whatever.”
I was trying to my bills with rogers for the past two days online and their website just keeps giving me an error. Now reading your post I can see that they were not ready for the spike in traffic – and that is a technology company?
The answer to all of that is that consumers have no choice over here. I hate rogers, but where I am going to go?
Great point Rob! I think that’s one of the problems of having a monopoly with the iPhone.
They feel like they don’t have to do anything to win over their customers or enhance the user experience because the product demand is so high.
It’s a shame that they’re riding high on one product acquisition instead of building real relationships with their customers
So they do have email notifications when you click “learn more”
https://your.rogers.com/investorrelations/news_wireless.asp
But the notifications are just for future press releases and not targeted at people looking for the Iphone.
Definitely missed a huge opportunity here, but it was mostly just laziness.
Thanks for the comments, everyone. So I was suggesting a boring ol’ sign-up form… but what else could they be doing between now and July 11 to ramp up?
Create a Flash-based virtual iPhone for people to play with if they register for a waiting list? Have a Waiting for the iPhone podcast discussing a feature or two each episode? I’d love to hear your ideas.
How about roll an RSS feed / email updater for iPhone news that people could subscribe to?
How about getting people to tell them what they’re looking for / why they’re buying an iPhone?
How about giving people a chance to sign up in advance and donate some of their purchase price to a worthy charity?
Warning! The level of suckage of Rogers is not going to diminish just because they sell shiny iPhones. They’re the only GSM game in town and they are, as my friend and their customer says, ‘The Devil.’
Are kidding me? Rogers.com can’t even figure out what province I live in, even when I’m connecting from a Rogers Internet connection or a Rogers Blackberry…
Colin, at least they’re respecting your privacy. 🙂
And James, those are great suggestions. One small note – the new iPhone will be 3G, which will be supported by both Rogers and Fido (owned, naturally, by Rogers).
Incidentally, at LAST the link clicks through to a (very brief) information page about the iPhone. That page has a link to get more information… which opens Apple’s iPhone page.