How to Engage Customers to Drive Loyalty Redemption
Airlines share how they develop and promote their rewards programs to provide the best value for their loyalty customers
To have a successful loyalty program, airlines need customers not only to enroll, but to actually start earning miles and redeeming their points. By making it easy to collect and redeem rewards, airlines can improve results and increase customer loyalty.
We discuss with loyalty experts how they’ve been overcoming the challenges around customer loyalty post-COVID, maximizing awareness of their loyalty program, and motivating users to actively engage with rewards bookings on their websites.
EveryMundo customers Virgin Atlantic and Spirit joined us at Outperform to share how they have designed their rewards programs and strategically used Fare Marketing to incentivize program membership and bookings. Air Canada unfortunaltey did not make it to the panel last minute, but we still shared the loyalty strategies they are using.
Click the tiles below to jump to each airine’s session highlights, or watch the full session here.
When Covid-19 pandemic occurred, Virgin Atlantic took it as an opportunity to take a step back and analyze their customer journey when it comes to loyalty. Through their analysis they found that customers had difficulty registering for the loyalty program and finding flights to purchase with their points.
With this information, Virgin Atlantic knew they needed a partner to help them bring points to the forefront of the customer journey. They began working with EveryMundo on identifying how to strategically acquire customers from the beginning, from the initial flight search, through segmentation and then leading them into the appropriate funnel to convert. Virgin Atlantic created airTRFX pages where loyalty members can go through the journey and redeem their points with ease.
Two members of the Virgin Atlantic team joined us for this panel to share how they have redesigned their loyalty program and how they plan to continue evolving the program in the future:
“I absolutely love working with EveryMundo. I’ve been on a journey with them since I joined Virgin Atlantic three years ago and the support that they give is incredible. If you’ve got any questions or issues their support team is on it immediately. We might be in different time zones but there’s always someone there for us, so it’s amazing. “
Spirit relaunched their loyalty program in 2021 with major changes. The first change in the relaunch was to make the points more valuable. They also added the ability for customers to purchase Points Plus Cash and have Family Pooling. Since the relaunch, Spirit has seen an increase of 5x in redemption.
Using an expansion set for dynamic fares in points, Spirit launched the Point Deal Finder airModule to enable customers to filter by origin, destination, and budget to see what they can redeem for their points. Spirit placed the Point Deal Finder prominently on their home page, and now more rewards conversions happen through that airModule than any other single touchpoint.
Spirit says the key to success of the relaunch was making it easy use points, and making the points more valuable. When the value became clear people signed up naturally and more frequently redeemed their rewards travel.
Spirit shares how they changed their rewards program strategy when they relaunched in 2021, and what the results have been so far:
“More than 25% of our customers who are redeeming with points come through just two EveryMundo pages. The conversion rate coming from our airTRFX rewards page is double our other airTRFX pages, which also perform well, but it just speaks to the impact of having that availability of rewards bookings on that page.”
Air Canada has successfully scaled their loyalty program using Fare Marketing to ensure that rewards points are visible to users at every stage of the booking funnel. They are not only showcasing rewards points for promotions, or only on particular landing page, they include valuable information for their loyalty program for any user on all of their airTRFX pages.
By deploying the rewards expansion set Air Canada can add fares in points to any airModule. Customers are able to toggle between fares in cash or in rewards points. This includes the Fare Finder Map where users who are still in the inspirational stage of their travel planning are able to explore Air Canada’s network and see where they can afford to travel using their points.
Take a look at how Air Canada has used Fare Marketing to increase awareness of their rewards program, and made it easy for customers to redeem travel:
“We wanted to make the shopping experience easy, we wanted to make it feel safe and comfortable to travel, and we wanted to give them the tools to do all of that in the most seamless way possible. With EveryMundo, customers can browse through our network and see results tailored to their travel preferences and they can book it right there in just a few clicks.”