Points for Thoughts: Virgin America’s Quest to Know its Customers
Despite the longtime popular awareness in marketing circles that communication is a two-way street, I’m still amazed at how many airline marketing strategies revolve exclusively around push messages. Most of the communication that reaches me is one-way: “we (the airline) are offering you X/flying to Y/or introducing Z.” But quite honestly, nine times out of ten, I don’t care. And if I didn’t work in this space for a living, too many of these messages would induce me to simply remove myself from the communications list.
I have come back to Virgin America several times in this space over the years, but it’s because I continue to be impressed with how they get so many things right. Their latest approach: offering rewards points for customer opinions. Seems like a novel concept, right? Is there anybody more important to know than those who have already opted-in to your frequent flyer program, and therefore have made it clear they want to engage with you?
It will be interesting to see if other airlines start doing a better job of listening to their customers, and perhaps even incentivize them to offer qualitative feedback.
