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Do Not Solicit at 36,000 Feet!

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Jul 26 2010

As a frequent flyer one of my pet peeves is the presentation of credit card offers by flight attendants on behalf of their financial services partners.  I feel bad for the flight attendants having to sell this stuff, presumably to get commission to supplement their incomes.  However what really irritates me is the assumption that I am willing to listen to or am even remotely interested in hearing yet another credit card offer, especially when they know I am a captive audience.  

So I want to start a “do not solicit” list for frequent flyers (I am only half kidding) which would prohibit this annoying interruption.  It seems like the worst form of untargeted marketing.  Surely the airlines and their partners have learned the lesson of the past several years that the more relevant and timely your offer, and the more personalized its presentation, the better your chances of conversion. 

Why is it that these particular companies insist on this kind of “dark age” approach?  The more data-driven marketers  that we work with at Quaero understand that not only do untargeted offers not produce as many conversions, they risk alienating future prospects for your product.  In particular they invest in the following areas:

  • Creating a baseline understanding of customer purchase behavior and purchase drivers
  • Using that understanding to create target segments for each campaign (and, even better, “strategic” segments which persist over time) which tailor and align the offer(s) with the most relevant and receptive prospects
  • Objectively measure the results and feed that learning back into their planning processes and segmentation approaches so that they continuously improve

I want to offer our help to any marketers out there that want to embrace these kinds of approaches.  The marketing world is changing towards being more data-driven, selective and targeted.  You will benefit if you can make that shift and us frequent flyers can enjoy a few more minutes of peace and quiet at 36,000 feet!

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Jul 27 2010

Anthony Famularo said:

Similarly, realtors in my area are just as guilty of untargeted marketing as the airlines. Every day I get no less than 5 neon flyers in my mailbox with their face stating how they sell more homes than the other realtors.
An enterprising neighbor started his own neighborhood version of Craig's List and signs these realtors up as paying customers.
The big pitch to get them on board: He captures and offers profile data of anyone who uses the site. Even the small-sized company is beginning to see the benefits of using data to drive their marketing strategies.
I hope someday soon this will translate into less flyers to have to recycle!

Sep 3 2010

Dave Raffaele said:

Great post Niall. Would be great to get the airline's thoughts on this post.

There is one reason why this practice will not stop....it works. If you watch, the airline gets at least one person to sign up for that credit card on each flight. The reason is that there is value in that offer for that person who filled out that form at that time. And how about those Realtor fliers? Ultimately someone who is thinking about selling their house will see one of those fliers at the right time and will call that broker because they saw value in that offer....while their neighbor didn't. The same could be said for the grocery store circulars you get in your mailbox. Is that any different than the Realtor's mailing or the airline's mid-air offer? The only difference I see is that the people see a high level of value in that entire circular of OFFERS they did not opt in to. If they didn't see that value, then I suspect we would hear more complaints about that approach as well.

In the end, blind faith or "dark age" approaches will continue to be used....and work...as long as the right number of people continue to find value in what is being offered. The second that threshold is not met marketers will move on to some other avenue to get our attention....and our money.

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