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In most of today’s statement applications that use inserts, there is not decent tracking mechanism. This causes problems like my latest American Airlines AAdvantage statement. The statement did not include a lot of personalized content.

However, It did contain 6 inserts, and they were all nice full color offset ones with good design. The problem was that the piece included inserts for 2 competing flower services. Each had AA co-branded inserts in my statement. If I were them, I would be angry that they paid to share their chance to reach me with their number one competitor. That’s where AA made a large mistake by sticking to yesterday’s statement production practices.

How could this happen?

First, the inserts weren’t barcoded, so it’s probably an operator manually loading a hopper with incorrect inserts. The inserts were not barcoded, so Quality Control could not have caught this after the piece was inserted and sealed without ripping open samples and creating a reprint burden. If the inserts were barcoded, the system could have noticed that there were competing inserts.

So, there was no tracking mechanism in production, which means no tracking mechanism to accounting, which means no visibility of placement to the co-op advertiser who placed the insert to reduce AA’s postage burden. People have to stop thinking of statements as a burden and start thinking of them for what they are: great marketing opportunities.

How could this have been avoided?

Moving from inserts to onserts and personalized messages would resolve the bulk of this. Admittedly, I looked at the inserts. If the statement were delivered in full color, a narrow selected set of messages could have printed on my statement.

They could have done so much more. American knows that I am a loyal customer. They also know that my flying habits include frequent visits to Boston and New York, and a trip to the UK about every other month. It’s a pretty regular pattern, and as a customer I couldn’t have given them more actionable information if I called them. They know where I go and how long I stay. Their partners might like to reach out to someone that takes long flights. That could sell me a bigger iPod (because American Airlines doesn’t have in-seat video on international flights). Their partners could sell me sound masking earphones, a special carry-on bag, or even suggestions on travel books. I’m sure Tumi would like to get access to me, as would brookstone and even British retailers.

Someday, this will all pass, and I’ll have nothing in my mailbox to pick apart. But until that day, I have to continue doing this.

BTW: go ahead and leave comments:

Is a loyalty program wasting opportunities on you?

This was an article I wrote for publication, but nobody wanted to pick it up this season. Since it was getting dusty, I figured it was time to post it here.

There are at least 5 kinds of white space, which is confusing because people think of white space management as a binary feature. The product either has it or lacks it. It’s mush more interesting than that. Here are the 5 types: Read the rest of this entry »