Airline enlists the post office to help it reactivate bad e-mail addresses
Cathay Pacific Airways’ most recent voyage was far from the bright blue skies over its home base in Hong Kong. It took to the postal mailways in a little green box to reactivate the bad — that is, undeliverable — e-mail addresses of thousands of its traveler program participants.
“It’s a company resource that was oozing out and seeping away if [we didn’t] do something about it,” says Mark T. Weinberger, the airline’s vice president of e-commerce and marketing.
To manage Cathay’s average annual 9% churn rate for its opt-in e-mail CyberTraveler program, the firm’s first effort to reclaim the bad e-mail addresses was to drop a pricey sweepstakes offer into the mail last February. It was rewarded with a lofty 32.8% response in the United States and 51% in Canada.
The campaign mailed in six stages to the postal addresses of 70,843 undeliverables. The pieces hit mailboxes between Feb. 20 and March 1.
The package — which cost Cathay Pacific $1 a pop including mailing — is a 4-1/2-by-5-by-2-inch dark green cardboard box with “Instant Winner” and “50 Free Trips to Hong Kong!” printed on the outside. Inside, a colorful brochure featuring Asian wonders details the offer and encourages travelers to update their CyberTraveler e-mail address. A slip of paper in a fortune cookie directs recipients to the Web site. The odds of winning? One in 1,450.
“We wanted something that begged to be opened,” Weinberger explains. “And once it was opened, we wanted the consumer’s perception to be, ‘I’d be an idiot not to enter this.’”
Those who didn’t respond by the April 15 deadline were sent a “one last chance” letter to reactivate or be dropped from the program. CyberTraveler members receive discounts as well as other offers and information.
Thanks to the mailing’s success, Cathay Pacific is rolling out a new marketing plan June 1. For each legitimate bounce, a first class letter will be generated and dropped in the mail to advise customers of the bad address. They’ll be offered the opportunity to update it on the company’s Web site.
The cost of acquiring new qualified names is high for the airline — anywhere from $2 to $20. They’re usually captured via contests for free trips to Asia and the like, which are promoted in banner ads on search engines and travel sites, Weinberger says.
“The amount of staff time, brainpower, creativity and money that goes into getting new members is a big effort,” he adds. “To the extent that we can reactivate a member [who’s] gone undeliverable on us, that’s a beautiful thing.”
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