Fly High: JetBlue’s Successful Approach to Social Media
The prospect of traveling given the current status of the world, to some, seems a little far-fetched. This change in consumer behavior following the COVID-19 pandemic and international travel restrictions took a massive toll on the airline industry as a whole, forcing many commercial airliners to consider their options of how to either recover or minimize their losses.
This has been especially true for the New York City-based company JetBlue. Dating back to April of 2020, JetBlue had announced that their daily number of passengers decreased by 95% as well as began taking a negative financial hit by issuing refunds. Stock prices even plummeted 67% as a result of decreased travel. Regardless, JetBlue has always been known for their social media presence and commitment to customer service and beyond. The current social media campaign being implemented attempts to alleviate passenger fears and reassure them that flying during these times is as safe as possible.
Understanding how the airline industry has been impacted by the pandemic gives us reasonable assumptions as to what the generalized business directives are for airline companies during these times. These include
increasing the demand for flights, filling spots on empty planes, generating more revenue via decreasing cancelled flights, and ensuring passenger satisfaction through each step of the process from departure to arrival. If successful, these will accomplish three goals that all social media campaigns ought to accomplish:
- Increase Brand Awareness
- Increase Website (and air) Traffic
- Increase Conversions
JetBlue is no exception. What can be found on their Twitter account’s pinned tweet is the steps they are taking to adapt to new healthy and safety guidelines, an attempt to assure passengers that they will be safe when traveling with JetBlue. Along with safety messages, additional content throughout their social accounts attempt to direct people to their “Best Fare Finder.” All of this is coupled with JetBlue’s reputation of being one of the most friendly, community-centered brands on social media. Combining all of these elements increases their chances of success at accomplishing all of these goals.
To better explain why I think JetBlue stands out, I will refer to the Sales Funnel. More specifically, my intent is that you will also be able to see how their social media goals fall in line with business directives, as well as propose what KPIs are relevant to measuring this success.
The top of the Sales Funnel involves attracting potential customers with the goal of increasing brand awareness and website traffic. Some KPIs relevant to step include measuring share of voice, social profile visits, and website visitors. JetBlue’s social media campaign involves both being active with their community and directing followers to their website to discover their best fares. From a glance, I think it’s pretty clear to see that their social media campaign would help accomplish both these feats.
The middle of the Sales Funnel seeks to identify engagement. The relevant goals at this stage of the process include increasing engagement and lead generation. Associated with these are KPIs measuring social engagement with content such as shares, mentions, and clicks, as well as measuring the number of inquiries and sales leads. This step is especially valuable when seeking conversions, and this is where I believe their strategy could use a little tweaking. Engagement with social content on Twitter pertaining to their rates and flight promotions is shockingly low when in comparison to their 1.9 Million followers. This is not to say that they’re strategy is unsuccessful by any means. I bring this up to suggest that, while the perceived goals are there, effort towards achieving the goals at this step seem to be lacking ever so slightly. I will, however, give JetBlue the benefit of the doubt because any increase in the number of passengers is an improvement from the rock-bottom numbers they experienced at the height of the pandemic.
The final step of the Sales Funnel is conversion. The goal in mind here is to increase the number of passengers and generate sales of which these can be tracked as appropriate KPIs. A look at their Q4 earnings report indicates that revenue declined 67% on a year-by-year basis. However, that decline was better than their expectations and represents a nine-point sequential improvement quarter over quarter aided by more rigid booking trends in October and improved volumes in the second half of December. While their social media campaign cannot be entirely responsible for this financial improvement, it can be perceived that the end goal of their campaign is to contribute to increased revenue from previous quarters.
I understand the impact that COVID-19 has had on the airline industry. That is why I took notice of JetBlue’s efforts to encourage people to fly by reassuring them of their health and safety practices while presenting ways for which potential passengers can book their flights. By no means is it perfect, however. There could be changes regarding how to increase engagement with individual posts and direct people to their website more often, but it is evident that their campaign seeks to advance towards the restructured business objectives caused by the pandemic. JetBlue has always excelled at clear communication and customer service on social media. As their mission statement of “inspire humanity” would suggest, this ongoing social media campaign is one that, for the most part, successfully builds upon their past and pushes towards newfound goals that aim to get more people traveling while simultaneously doing their part to limit the spread of the virus.
