Why Czech Airlines’ Email Marketing Sucks
Email marketing is a powerful tool that can help you attract many customers — if you know how to do it right. Czech Airlines don’t. What follows is a short lesson in email marketing.
I do fly frequently but I always book the flight that offers me the least time spent on airports and the best price for that so I find myself aboard the aircrafts of many different carriers. This is why I subscribe for the email newsletters of many airlines, as well as to those of flight booking sites.
Some of them have exceptional email marketing. Others are ok. Then there are Czech Airlines. Let me show you what I mean:
The subject line of the email is Quit dreaming, just fly! and I’m getting the exact same email at least twice a month.
So why does this email suck?
The subject line is just not sexy
I have lots of dreams and aspirations but none of them is to fly. Does this mean that they want me to abandon my dreams, take a flight somewhere and get on with my mundane life?
Even if I were dreaming of flying, where to? Am I going to fly somewhere fun and sunny, or cold and dark, or warm and full of war conflict? There’s just too little information, and more importantly — nothing to make me want to open the message.
This subject line is simply awful.
The email body has no useful information or hooks
Let’s assume you open the email despite the dull and uninspired subject (you probably misclicked).
What you see is a picture of an airplane heading somewhere and a button “Book now”. The image of an airplane tells you you’re booking a flight — but where to? There is just nothing to get me hooked so that I would click on the button.
There’s also a hashtag — #flyOK. I don’t want to fly just OK— I generally want to fly safe, to take off and arrive on time, and enjoy good in-flight service. But no — what I’d get with Czech Airlines is just OK, nothing more than that.
Ironically, an OK email marketing would be an improvement from what they have now.
It takes me to a sucky landing page
The email content hasn’t really sparked my curiosity. The only reason that I click on it is this article — I want to tell you what you’ll find if you do indeed tap on “Book now”. Here is where I land:
This page is another chance to grab my attention and offer me something really cool, and it’s also another chance missed by Czech Airlines. Instead of showing me an image of a beautiful and interesting destination they can take me to, they want me to do more stuff — like select my country and language before it takes me to the air carrier’s homepage.
This would have been perfectly fine if I wanted to be on the CSA website — but I don’t. I’m not looking for anything in particular and they’re not offering me anything. This is where I close the page and move on with my mundane life.
I get the same email over and over again
I got the email I showed you above four times in the last couple of months. The very same email. Same subject line, same email content, same landing page. This may be simply a marketing approach — wear your customers down until they eventually give up and check out the destinations you fly to. I do, however, doubt it does anything for the airline.
As a prospective client, I get annoyed and every time I receive the exact same message from CSA, the chance they turn me into an actual, paying customer, decreases by approximately 25%. Since that’s the fourth email, I’m currently at 0% conversion chance.
Everybody gets the same email
There is no personal element to the message. CSA have my name, they know where I’ve flown with them — so why not use this? I get the feeling that they send the same email to all of their customers, and this doesn’t make me feel special.
But wait — maybe it’s just an isolated case of bad email marketing
Sadly, it’s not. Here’s another one of CSA’s emails I’ve gotten this year, just to give you an idea:
That one I got twice in February (I’m guessing Valentine’s Day is the reason for the Fly with LOVE subject line) and it’s just as bad as the email above, and every other email I’ve gotten from Czech Airlines.
Enough negativity — let’s see some good airline email marketing
Here’s an email I recently got from Lufthansa.
Subject line: Summer in Europe: dream destinations at a great price
The subject line offers me dream destinations at great prices — I won’t say no to that!
Once I open the message, I see that it’s personalized (it has my name) and offers me actual places I can visit with the actual prices of the flights.
I admit it’s a little weird that they offer me to “soak up the sun in Europe” and then sends me to Gothenburg but I’m willing to let this slide.
Once I click on one of the destinations shown, I’m taken to a landing page with a calendar, where I can see the prices of the flight month by month. I see a month that’s super cheap so I click it and I see the fares for all the flights in that month.
As a user, I’m already engaged and Lufthansa’s chances to actually sell me a ticket are already higher.
Here’s another example.
Subject line: Check out our summer destinations on sale from 419 EUR!
This email is offering me special offers for the summer and has a price right there in the subject line. Of course I’m clicking to see where I can go!
The email them offers me something that I really, really want: to explore the world! Plus, it says “Summer hot picks”, which makes me think there will be promotional prices — again, I’m in!
There’s very little text but those images are really sexy — I want to go canoeing on a mountain lake, to chill on a beautiful beach or to explore a megapolis.
Then come the landing pages: if I click on “Find deals”, I get a page with different tickets divided by areas. Clicking on any of the images below takes me to pages with preselected filters based on the types of vacations I may be interested in. Again, I’m already engaged and take my time on the KLM website.
The email lacks in personalization but that’s mostly because I only subscribed with a generic email address I use mostly for promotional emails, so I’m guessing they don’t really have a lot of info about me.
Conclusion
As I said in the beginning, email can be a very powerful tool if you use it wisely. Personalization, customer data, customer segmentation and strong copywriting make any email newsletter a selling tool that converts prospects into paying customers.
But send the same generic, cold, poorly written email message to all of your customers over and over again, and you have a bigger chance driving them to the competition instead of making them buy from you.
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