I recently received a subtle-yet-effective lifecycle series of emails from Delta Airlines after I had shown interest in booking a flight with them several weeks ago. What struck me about this campaign was how seamless and clever it was to trigger a loyalty-based lifecycle series based on a customer’s recent website activity.

This sequence of events all began with a regularly scheduled promotional email from Delta that I would assume they sent to all members of their SkyMiles program. This email by chance happened to remind me that I was interested in visiting Salt Lake City for a weekend in February, and I knew from previous emails that Salt Lake City happens to be one of Delta’s hub locations. From this initial email I went to the Delta website, where I browsed for flights and compared airfare. I did not make a purchase during this web session.

A mere two hours later I received my first email in the lifecycle campaign, featuring the subject line “Visit delta.com For All Your Travel Needs.” This message served the simple purpose of outlining the benefits of booking my flight through delta.com rather than another third-party site. I was particularly impressed by the promptness of this message — my interest in Delta was clearly reciprocated by them in a timely manner.

Interestingly, the correspondence did not stop there. Delta reached out to me the very next day to continue explaining the benefits of their website and to outwardly ask for me to return to their site. This second message featured the subject line “Come On Back To delta.com” and reminded me that I had an unfulfilled order waiting for further action.

Even though I did not make a purchase during this period, the email exchange I had with Delta was quite valuable in a number of other ways. These include:

• The entire decision to consider shopping for tickets was set in motion from a regularly scheduled loyalty program campaign. Newsletters can generate revenue and interest just by being in front of the customer!
• My website activity triggered almost instantaneous correspondence from Delta showing that they were valuing my business. Website analytics data integration with email programs can help businesses show appreciation for their customers when the brand is fresh in their minds.
• Web analytics data isn’t just for cart abandons — it can also be used to trigger entire loyalty and retention-based messages. Taking a long view of the customer sales cycle can impart positive brand affinity to your customers that will pay off in the long run.

The moral of the story is that even though I didn’t make the purchase this time around, chances are the next time I need to buy airline tickets I will be stopping by Delta’s website first.

Let’s say you have an upcoming vacation or trip and want to plan accordingly. So you subscribe to a million different email lists related to travel, including airlines, cruise ships, travel destinations etc. Then your trip is canceled or delayed. Boo!

Typically you have three email options

1. Ignore the travel emails in your inbox and become inactive.
2. Go through the tedious unsububscribe process or simply hit spam on all the emails that you signed up for and no longer want.
3. Periodically open the emails and dream about the vacation that might not happen.

Recently I saw an unsubscribe page from a company called Vacations To Go that offers a nice fourth option for the discerning email traveler. They offer an option to suspend your current subscription and then choose a month when the subscription will restart. Vacations To Go also offers a frequency option of once a week, once a month, and every two months. This is smart – especially in the fickle and highly competitive travel industry.

Here is the opt out/out down page from Vacations To Go:

What other creative opt-downs have you seen?

Travel tends to peak during the holiday season and late winter months.  But given the state of our economy and financial changes that have occured over the last year, how have American’s travel habits shifted? A review from the Experian Simmons Summer 2009 and Summer 2008 full-year National Consumer Studies shows that domestic vacation travel is slightly down in comparison to years past. Key trends and statistics include:

• Over the past year, all modes of transportation, except for buses, have seen a decrease in the percentage of vacationing Americans using them for travel. This likely due to the fact that fewer Americans are vacationing away from home.

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I have been a fan of Southwest Airlines for years. They seem to truly want to please their customers and are always making changes to the way they work to make processes better. Some recent changes that they have made for the better include assigning a boarding range instead of everyone in the boarding group crowding together, taking credit cards for in-flight services, accepting online check-in 24 hours prior to your flight, allowing some pets in the cabin and now improving the post-purchase phase of their email program.

One pet peeve I have had with Southwest in the past is that once I purchased a ticket for a flight online I would get an email confirmation at the point of purchase, but nothing else. My confirmation would then get buried deep in my email inbox. When the time came for my flight and I needed my confirmation number, I would have to go “deep inbox fishing” to find it. This confirmation could be buried under thousands of emails. Now Southwest has changed this process for the better.

Here’s a closer look at what Southwest is doing now:

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The summer’s consistently warm temperatures and long hours of daylight drive American consumers to partake in a number of outdoor activities. In this post, Experian Simmons provides a deeper understanding of current trends and behavioral tendencies surrounding these activities, including vacation plans and popular summer destinations.

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The following entry is a response to Erin Geoghegan’s piece arguing in favor of shorter email registration pages. Enjoy!

Counterpoint: It’s important to capture as much data as possible during the email sign-up process. The data you capture enables you to deliver the most relevant emails right away, know more about your audience, and build the foundation for successful, long-term customer relationships.

The sign-up page is a great place to capture customer data, especially for non-retailers. If you’re offering a highly personalized email marketing experience, why not give your subscribers the ability to receive the most targeted campaigns right away?

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Let’s face it: it shouldn’t take a national holiday like Mother’s Day or a major news event like the recent vice president nominations to remind marketers to be tactical in marketing to women. The simple fact is that women hold tremendous financial sway over the global economy, so they certainly deserve our undivided attention as responsible marketers.

Jake Swearingen of BNET has a short piece this week on “Some Common Mistakes When Marketing to Women,” with some handy quotes from Marti Barletta, president of the TrendSight Group. The article gives some tips that email marketers can certainly learn from, such as the impact of lifestyle images on female customers:

“Making it personal is more important to appealing women,” says Barletta. “They get impatient with theory. They want to know how it affects people…Women are interested in people and character,” says Barletta.

A great example of this tactic in action is the latest Vera Bradley campaigns featuring their Resort Collection of bags and accessories. In all three emails, we see their products in their appropriate context — vacation getaways — and in two of them, we see female models in carefree, relaxed poses. The imagery and copy make it clear how the products are beneficial to the end user in simple terms.

Vera Bradley’s “Resort Collection Series”
Sneak peek the new Resort Collection from Vera Bradley
Vacation in style with the new Resort Collection form Vera Bradley.
Dive into the Resort Collection from Vera Bradley.

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