Do Not Solicit at 36,000 Feet!

As a frequent flyer one of my pet peeves is the presentation of credit card offers by flight attendants on behalf of their financial services partners.  I feel bad for the flight attendants having to sell this stuff, presumably to get commission to supplement their incomes.  However what really irritates me is the assumption that I am willing to listen to or am even remotely interested in hearing yet another credit card offer, especially when they know I am a captive audience.  

So I want to start a “do not solicit” list for frequent flyers (I am only half kidding) which would prohibit this annoying interruption.  It seems like the worst form of untargeted marketing.  Surely the airlines and their partners have learned the lesson of the past several years that the more relevant and timely your offer, and the more personalized its presentation, the better your chances of conversion. 

Why is it that these particular companies insist on this kind of “dark age” approach?  The more data-driven marketers  that we work with at Quaero understand that not only do untargeted offers not produce as many conversions, they risk alienating future prospects for your product.  In particular they invest in the following areas:

• Creating a baseline understanding of customer purchase behavior and purchase drivers
• Using that understanding to create target segments for each campaign (and, even better, “strategic” segments which persist over time) which tailor and align the offer(s) with the most relevant and receptive prospects
• Objectively measure the results and feed that learning back into their planning processes and segmentation approaches so that they continuously improve

I want to offer our help to any marketers out there that want to embrace these kinds of approaches.  The marketing world is changing towards being more data-driven, selective and targeted.  You will benefit if you can make that shift and us frequent flyers can enjoy a few more minutes of peace and quiet at 36,000 feet!