John Samuel, 34, managing director of interactive marketing for American Airlines, has created a Web site that millions of frequent fliers can't live without. His site (http://www.aa.com) -- unveiled in May 1995 and redesigned last June -- is the most frequently visited airline page on the Web. It draws about 1.5 million visits per week; it sends a weekly email detailing last-minute, low-fare deals to 2.1 million subscribers; and it maintains a special email list for college students that has attracted 175,000 subscribers.
In an interview with Fast Company, Samuel explained why so many people seem to find his site so hard to live without.
1. Serve your best customers first. There are 37 million members of American's AAdvantage [frequent-flier] program, about 11 million of whom are "active" -- meaning that there has been some recent activity on their account. We want our site to be the best place for our AAdvantage members to do business with American. That's the litmus test for what does and doesn't happen on the site. Already, 11% of those active members have come to the site and logged in. Even better, 25% of our top-tier customers have come to the site. We love that.
2. Email is everything. On the Web, you walk a fine line between serving customers and annoying them. Email has been a critical tool for helping us walk that line. It has allowed us to create a product that couldn't have existed otherwise -- our NetSaver service. One thing that we hope to do soon is what we call "customized email": We'll wrap the NetSaver product around other content and s services,o that when people receive email from us, it will be tailored to their travel interests.
3. To get through, get personal. Personalization goes to the heart of what we're trying to do with this site: We want to let people check miles, book tickets, and change travel plans. But personalization is hard. Lots of companies are struggling to persuade customers to give them personal information. So you must be clear with your customers about the benefits that they'll get if they give you that information. Obviously, our customers know that they earn miles and get trips through the AAdvantage program. Still, we constantly remind them of those benefits. When you log onto our site, for example, you'll see your name and how many AAdvantage miles you have -- in the upper right-hand corner, in big letters and numbers. People love that.
The other big challenge involves creating enough real content to make customization work. Here's one small example: When we posted a message telling people in the Chicago area that construction on I-90 would mean that they'd need to allow more time to get to O'Hare, we got great feedback. But it takes a lot of work to come up with that kind of specific and timely content for hundreds of different categories of customers.
Coordinates: John Samuel, john_samuel@amrcorp.com
Sure, we spend lots of time visiting Web sites that we can't live without. But we like it even better when the Web comes to us. That's why, as hard as it is to imagine life without the Web, it's harder to imagine life without email newsletters. Here are four of our favorites.
Subscribing to InfoBeat News is like receiving a personalized newspaper in your inbox every day. This free service offers a daily summary of wire-service reports, business and financial news, entertainment and human-interest stories, and more. If you want to learn more about a story, just click on the headline, and you'll be transferred to the InfoBeat Web site. Apparently, we're not the only people who love this service. Each day, InfoBeat sends out more than 4 million email newsletters.
Coordinates: InfoBeat News, http://www.infobeat.com
Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel Newsletter is published daily. It focuses on "matters that affect your own next vacation trip -- and nothing else." Each day, you receive reports on hotel and airfare specials, news developments that can affect your travel plans, and exotic package deals. The newsletter is offered in other formats; we recommend the multimedia version, which allows you to view images and live links.
Coordinates: Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel Newsletter, http://www.frommers.com
Don't have time to think about the weekend until it's already here? You can plan ahead effortlessly by subscribing to the Sidewalk e-mail. A service of Microsoft's Sidewalk.com, this free weekly email highlights concerts, art openings, sporting events, and other local happenings. The newsletter is available for Boston, Chicago, Denver, Houston, New York, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, the Twin Cities, and Washington, DC. In most cases, the email goes out on Thursday, but the timing varies from city to city.
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