Fly me courageous: adopting digital channels for American Airlines

Using Digital Channels to Fuel the World's Largest Airline

Daniel P. Garton, Executive Vice President, Marketing

AMR Corp., and American Airlines

Using digital media to attract and interact

• Claim: 75% of people research travel online; 50% of business travelers book online, though 40% of leisure do
• Claim: aa.com is the 11th most visited site in the travel category.
• Strategy is: be innovative, but watch what others do...sometimes being number two is better (just ask the second mouse to get to the trap)
• Claim: 1.6 million visitors a day...70% of hte ir customers visited the aa.com site in the last 12 months...90% of the gold/platinum customers.
• Providing options in booking to enable cusotmer needs to be balanced against price, schedule and extra services (such as baggage charges, mileage bonus)
• For AAdvantage customers, making award booking more convenient and transparent.
• Downloadable desktop widget (Dealfinder) for searching and presenting user-defined travel options via RSS...automating the search against user criteria...feedback what customers are interested in to the revenue management group.
• Future of aa.com: mobility, profile based notification, electronic boarding passes, bundlin
• 25% of advertising is spent online...search, mobile, microsites, messageboards, Facebook, travel aggregators...among others.

Using technology to serve customers during travel

• Customer technologies: Onboard power ports, entertainment and connectivity, and self service machines...all aligned with the idea of maximizing the customer's time (esp frequent flier)
• Employee tools: Automating the airport experience using enhanced gate displays, gate advisors, bag finder and Helix...a program that looks at individual customers and aligns high value who have had a bad experience and treat them differently.

Using digital to maintain contact post travel

• Half of Advantage miles earned are from non-flight partners.
• New members get 4 emails initially to encourage engagement...monthly memeber statements after opt-in.
• USe of digital promotions and customized offers to encourage activity.
• Milefinder Map:  locating ways to earn and burn miles with partners in local context (i.e., your neighborhood...and see comment about the partner).