United Airlines

For over 70 years United Airlines has served millions of air travel customers. Today, the airline flies to more than 800 destinations worldwide.

United Airlines needed a secure, promotional website to help build additional traffic and purchases at United.com. The site also needed to allow online Mileage Plus customers to take advantage of an offer for free ski tickets to Colorado ski resorts for themselves as well as their travel companions. In addition, a system to track the customer experience from start to finish, including mapping of customer ticket purchases, signup on the promotional website, notification and delivery of dynamic coupons, and verification of travel and coupon redemption was requested.

A user-friendly site with sophisticated data verification that helped reduce user error was developed. Via print and online advertising, consumers were led to United.com with an incentive to ski free. With the purchase of a ticket to Colorado, consumers were able to download a coupon for a free lift ticket.

With traffic being driven from multiple medias, including print, banner advertising, email newsletters, and featured placements on partner sites, the promotion delivered extremely high traffic numbers.

26,093 consumers registered on the site, of which 12,767 trips were booked. Estimating that the average airline ticket was $427 the cost per redemption ended up being $68.07. Good new: these were great numbers. Bad news: someone had to pay for all those additional redemptions.