A great way for any business to get more customers interested in buying or spending any kind of money at their retail locations is with deals. Deals keep people interested in spending money, because it means spending less. Deals have become a very popular marketing technique these days, with businesses of all types. Small businesses rely very heavily on the promotion of their deals, because a deal is one of the most useful marketing tactics for businesses who do not have a lot to spend on other, more expensive forms of marketing. For long now, Groupon has been the big name in deals and promotions, and many brands have trusted the company to promote their savings to consumers. Seeing potential in the internet deals industry, AT&T Wireless has decided to jump on the band wagon and give it a go. Now, they have released AT&T Alerts, which may prove to be some decent competition for Groupon.
That is of course, only with AT&T users. Obviously, AT&T cannot offer their service to anyone with a smartphone, but AT&T is just behind Verizon Wireless in the rankings of most popular wireless carriers. Therefore, the company’s new AT&T alerts will be available to quite a large market.
The way AT&T Alerts work is quite simple; users just opt in to receive the alerts, and then through geo-location based text messages, users will receive offers and promotions to businesses that are nearby their current locations.
In their promotional video for the new feature, AT&T explains it as follows:
Your town is full of exclusive deals. When you’re near those deals, AT&T texts personalized discounts from your preferred brands and other stuff you love, right to your phone.
Yes, this is exactly the same as what Groupon Now does, and has been doing since early 2011. Therefore, it is safe to say that anyone looking for this service, probably has already found it from Groupon, or has heard that Groupon is the best place to find the service. AT&T will of course find a lot of interest from their users, but will their service be blowing Groupon out of the water any time soon? I think not.
However, for those that are interested, the process of signing up is made very simple. AT&T Wireless users simply have to text the word SAVE, to ATTAlerts, or 28833257. The list of businesses that are already showing deals with AT&T Alerts is not very long, but it includes Staples, Gap, Zales, Duracell, Discover, Motorola, Last Call by Neiman Marcus, and a few others. There is no doubt that AT&T will see significant success with their new deals platform, considering the popularity of deals amongst consumers and brands alike. However, to say that they will be big competition for Groupon, especially this early, would be a bit ridiculous.
