American Airlines email takes off with abandoned cart trigger program
Not everyone that looks online at air travel prices will book straight away. Many are browsing to research and compare prices. However, American Airlines wanted to keep these prospects “engaged and recapture the revenue”, so they collaborated with digital marketing solutions firm e-Dialog and created an email program that would do just that.
The resulting abandoned shopping cart trigger email program targets customers who log on to the American Airlines website, place a flight in the shopping cart, but do not go on to make a purchase. Within 24 hours, personalized email messages are sent to the abandoners with the lowest and most flexible fare options relevant to the flights they had placed in the abandoned shopping cart.
The results are impressive. Compared with standard fare sale campaigns the triggered emails resulted in 300% higher open rates, 200% higher click-through rates and 400% higher conversion rates.
“Not only did the Abandoned Cart Program deliver phenomenal results, but the learning it provided on big data analysis is helping us to improve the relevance of all our email programs,” said Kay Kerman, Director Email Marketing Strategy at American Airlines.
For more in-depth discussion about the triggered email program, watch Kay Kerman’s presentation at MediaPost’s 2013 Email Insider Summit.