American Airlines Email Revue – Acquisition Strategy

I just received an email from American Airlines where they’d like me to opt in to some additional email communications. In return, I will be entered into a contest where they are giving away a free trip as well as getting some additional miles or a discounted ticket.

My good friend Chris Baggott would always make an example of the Airlines when it came to providing targeted content to a targeted audience. The airlines know our home address, our home airport, our travel patterns… yet they send us specials for trips to/from other cities outside our cycle of travel, etc. It’s ridiculous… rather than providing us the information we’re looking for, they actually alienate us and then we barely read the emails they send.

Today I received an email from American and the graphic really caught my eye:

Upon clicking through, I found that American did a great job on this. The link to click through had a ‘key’ that basically told the receiving site who I was. In turn, when I modified my preferences (single-click, simple, flash), the results were immediate. I didn’t have to put in additional information that they already had and they didn’t try to add-on extraneous advertising or marketing for other products and services.

This is a very nice acquisition campaign – I’m curious how successful it will be. It had all the elements of success:

1. It grabbed your attention.
2. It provided an incentive.
3. It had a call to action.
4. The messaging was highly visible.
5. The conversion process was simple.

Nicely done! The real question, of course, is if they can keep their emails relevant to me. If they can’t, I’ll unsubscribe and this will all have gone to waste.