An Email Marketing Fail by American Airlines

Okay, when dating my last serious boyfriend I flew a lot on American Airlines. Got rather used to it. He was in Missouri and I in Texas, direct and cheap was American. So I used my Aadvantage membership a lot. I’ve joined every extra point program they have that makes sense short of the credit card (I don’t open any more credit cards because I am set with the ones I have).

So I get emails a lot about new programs. Some of them get deleted (I’m not the target market simply) and some read. I enjoy them for the most part. Well I get one today that is titled “Engage Your Travel Brain! Earn Bonus Miles And A Chance To Win A Vacation!” Dude, I’m there.

I skim some more (no one READS these emails) and see “Now through February 27, 2009, we invite you to engage 100% of your travel brain by visiting our American Airlines Travel Brain promotion. ” Awesome. I am thinking some hokey quiz that would be fun to take about flying. So I click through.

Title of the landing page: Test Your American Airlines® Travel Brain from AA.com, AAdvantage®, and AAVacations® Yes, a quiz, I’m excited.

Nope. This is kinda what I see …

only the original one told me that I was only using half my Travel Brain. I needed to subscribe to their other 2 emails to use it all. No quiz, no questions. Now, I do get a bonus 1000 miles (500 per subscription) if I keep them for 3 months. Now, given, I like their emails. I do. But dude, that’s what all this was? FAIL.

I was genuinely looking for fun. Looking for something to challenge and teach me something as well as entering a contest. I am happy I got my miles, don’t get me wrong. But they missed something that could have gotten people talking. They missed the social media, the excitement, the VIRAL.

So American Airlines, I hope you’re listening. You won’t lose me because of this (far from it), you might get business for it, but you lost a lot of good WOM marketing by putting out a very good looking but half baked marketing campaign.