The Email Wars

For those of you that know me it might seems like every week involves traveling, but there are a few weeks that keep me on the ground. But being a frequent air traveler it was interesting this AM to take a look at my top 3 airlines I travel and see how they have crossed OR not crossed email and social media marketing as a combined 1-2 punch. As the hot topic of late in email marketing of SWYN (Share with your Network) I took at look at the efforts of Southwest, Jet Blue and Alaska Air.

First of all they are all on Twitter and using them to drive deals, route changes, weather alerts and more. Jet Blue has even launched a new handle of Cheeps that works during the week to clear out deals on routes. So how are they using these two in combination with one another?

Well it looks like they are still church and state for the most part.

Jet Blue:

Great weekly emails. Frequency 3-4 Times a Month. Email Alerts with Transactional data

Twitter: @jetblue 1,186.186 Followers / 117,485 Followed

Merging of email and Social – none: emails miss the opportunity to cross promote FOLLOW US on Twitter or anywhere else. Even co-promoting content in the emails into the Twitter/Social stream. Imagine if they exposed that opt in list and watched it grow as a communication channel for the times when email was not appropriate.

Southwest Airlines:

Might be a little bias here as I always feel that their email programs could be better done – while at the same time I booked my last flight from the email I got from them – so they got me.

Stats: Emails 2-3 times a month – Not only good transactional emails but great (share on their social) emails that follow after trips welcoming you home and inviting you to share on their Guidebook on the SW site.

Twitter: @SouthwestAir 606,008 Followers / 8,802 F0llowed

Merging of email and social – from what it looks like no Twitter/FB hooks but instead calls to add to their own internal site guidebook. Maybe controlling the content is a key to their strategy. Social is mainly used to promote and converse with them.

Alaska Airlines:

Love the email programs of Alaska. I will go on record to state how well I think that they are well done, timely and using segmentation to connect with me on really simple things. They are the only one in the sample that have actually added Social to the email itself. And look at it hidden in the VERY bottom of this example. Why are they hiding it? Time will tell here.

Stats:

2-3 Touches PLUS Transactional Preflight emails. No post flight and that might be a place they could improve (take note of what SW is doing).

Twitter: @alaskaair 11,431 Followers / 6.575 Followed.

In Closing:

Odd to see that the one that is using it in the email actually has the lowest of the 3 followers/followed count. I know that JetBlue has promoted the hell out of it with the All you Can Jet campaign and the media attention so that makes sense. Making it a solid part of the program might really boost these numbers.

In the end I think that we will see more airlines adopting inclusion in their email programs as email and social are a great tandem 1-2 combination. It is all about interacting with you were you are – whether that is at Sea Level of 35K feet.

What do you think about travel brands using social with email? And who is using the combination well?

UPDATE: After I was just finishing this post I got one from American Airlines in a promo email. Seems that they are jumping onto the social bandwagon (in the footer) as well. Interesting.