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Welcome to SkyMiles Platinum!
This should have been the subject line of an email I should have received today.
Returning home yesterday from a trip to spend a few days working with a client in Seattle whose name I wish we could share, I surpassed the threshold for Platinum qualification. Knowing that this flight would get me over the requisite mileage, I checked the Delta Air Lines website to verify that my miles were posted and that they did indeed meet the requirement. They did.
All I should have had to do is check my email.
After confirming that Delta hasn't changed their program, I noticed that unlike the Silver and Gold levels, when you qualify for Platinum you don't actually receive it until the following calendar year.
Ok, while this is acceptable (there are likely very good business reasons for this, basically relating to outside costs that Delta likely incurs in providing its Platinum benefits), there's no reason Delta didn't at least send me an email recognizing the milestone. The website reflected the mileage so their system knows I have qualified.
This is certainly not meant to be an indictment on Delta, for there isn't another airline (or even hotel or other) program that I'm aware of that is timely with respect to customer communications. In fact, Delta's SkyMiles program was just named the best frequent flyer program for the year by Business Traveler Magazine, an award justly deserved.
Airline programs are, for most people, the paradigm for loyalty programs. While there is relatively little differentiation among most frequent flyer programs from a distance, there are both programmatic differences and, more fundamentally, differences in how the airlines use the programs for marketing purposes.
What so many companies fail to do is that it's not enough to build and operate a great loyalty program. The real gains, in terms of customer, revenue and profit growth, come from using the programs as a mechanism to effectively drive relationship marketing.
