Airlines take the plaudits at loyalty awards

DUBAI, UAE – Baltic Miles, Virgin America and Virgin Australia have all been recognised for frequent flyer program initiatives in the Loyalty Innovation Awards, presented at the Airline Business/Global Flight-organised Loyalty 2013 forum in Dubai today.

Virgin Australia led the way in the loyalty management category after dynamically developing its Velocity Frequent Flyer program to exploit an opportunity in the market to win new premium members. A strong marketing push and customer friendly innovations helped the Velocity programme more than double status members and profits during 2012.

“We delivered an aggressive promotional campaign which highlighted the key advantages of Velocity, increased engagement with the program and most importantly attracted new premium passengers to Virgin Australia,” says Velocity Frequent Flyer general manager Phil Gunter.

In the customer experience management category the judges picked out Virgin America’s #myVXexperience multimedia campaign. During its launch, flyers were able to send their tweets and Instagram photos to the Nasdaq and Reuters digital billboards in New York’s Times Square. More than 400 pictures and tweets were featured in September 2012.

“Even six months after its launch, the #myVXexperience continues to drive word of mouth and social sharing by both loyal repeat guests and dazzled first-time Virgin America flyers,” says Phil Seward, Virgin America’s director guest loyalty.

The Baltic Miles program was recognised in the technology category for the launch of its crowdsourcing platform, selecting the best customer created ideas and follow up personalisation initiative via targeted video messages.

“At launch the personalisation campaign invitations got a record newsletter opening rate covering 25% of all recipients, including a stunning 53% of our most active customers,” says Baltic Miles marketing director Annika Davidsone. “The campaign results are a great beginning for future program enhancements by incorporating the voice of the customer.”

The awards, judged by a panel of leading loyalty management specialists, are presented every year at the Loyalty event. Now in its fifth year, the Airline Business/Global Flight-organised Loyalty event is the leading airline travel loyalty management conference and forum.