If you listen long enough, almost every business leader on the planet will eventually tell you the same thing: Our people are our most important asset.
That’s often right. But for many businesses, I think their second-most important asset is sometimes undervalued.
It’s their relationship with their customers — maybe even more specifically, their customer email list.
Case in point: You might know that two airlines right now are both competing with each other to acquire Spirit Airlines.
- On the one hand, there’s Frontier Airlines, which made a roughly $21 per share cash-and-stock offer that was scheduled to go before Spirit Airlines shareholders this week.
- On the other hand, there’s JetBlue, which made a $30 per share cash offer-;then raised it to $31.50-;and is trying to squeeze Frontier out of the process.
Spirit delayed the shareholder vote yesterday, in light of JetBlue’s revised offer. And, that’s the context in which the CEO of JetBlue, Robin Hayes, sent an email to JetBlue passengers-;apparently to every member of JetBlue’s TrueBlue frequent flyer program-;updating them on the proposal.
It did really three things:
- First, it framed the argument JetBlue makes it for why JetBlue is the better deal. (“In short, this combination would bring you more of the JetBlue you know and love…”)
- Second, it set expectations for how quickly everyone might know the outcome. (“Our proposal is in the early stages and we won’t know for some time if we will be able to acquire Spirit.”)
- Finally, and this might be most important, it directed email recipients to a website pushing shareholders of Spirit to vote against the Frontier deal, with a clear call call to action and a simple interface.
This last bullet point to me is the most interesting, because it involves using JetBlue’s customer base and email list for something other than direct marketing-;which frankly is why I normally hear from airlines that have my email address.
JetBlue confirmed that the…