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What airlines are doing right in email

December 02, 2008 |

Interactivity is a huge factor in the travel industry, but some airlines are failing at simple best practices. Here's what you can learn from them to improve your marketing strategy.

American Airlines is big on email marketing. Its schedule is aggressive; I hear from the company twice a week, even if I don't fly for a while. But the emails arrive on the same day every week, so I'm never surprised when they arrive. When AA switched mail hosts earlier this year, it sent clear, prominent notices in advance of the change, so any inconvenience to readers was minimal.

JetBlue also sends plenty of email to its subscribers. It seems to have done some email harvesting, because I recently started receiving two copies of each of the airline's emails. One goes to my main account; the other is sent to a slightly different address, which I abandoned when I set up my frequent flier account several years ago. The messages routinely get flagged as spam, so the only time I see them is when I periodically review my junk folder -- and find my JetBlue emails, delivered in pairs.

AA and JetBlue are doing almost the same thing, week in and week out. But one is creating a superior online experience, while the other is sending duplicate emails that get stopped by spam filters. Which airline leaves a more favorable impression?

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