Southwest Airlines' Updated Email Program is a Winner

I have been a fan of Southwest Airlines for years. They seem to truly want to please their customers and are always making changes to the way they work to make processes better. Some recent changes that they have made for the better are assigning a boarding range instead of everyone in the boarding group crowding together, they take credit cards for in-flight services, you can check in online 24 hours prior to your flight, some pets are allowed in the cabin, and now their email program has improved when a flight has been booked.

One pet peeve I have had with Southwest in the past is that once I purchased a ticket for a flight online I would get an email confirmation at the point of purchase, but nothing else. My confirmation would then get buried deep in my email in box. When the time came for my flight and I needed my confirmation number, I would have to go deep in box fishing to find it. This confirmation could be buried under thousands of emails. Now this has changed.

• Southwest sends the initial confirmation email at the point of purchase.
• A reminder email, with the important confirmation numbers, is sent a few days prior to the flight. Now I have all the confirmation information I need without having to fish into my in box for the original confirmation email!
• And then I was sent a survey after my flight asking how Southwest Airlines did. The survey was short, to the point and well done.

Here is the confirmation email I received at the point of sale. In this case I purchased the ticket a little less than a month before the flight.

Here is the email subject line: Ticketless Confirmation - LANE/JORDAN

Here is the reminder email I received four days prior to my scheduled flight.

Here is the email subject line: Jordan, your trip is right around the corner!‏

Here is the survey email I received the next morning after my flight. The survey email was delivered in Rich Text so it will be easy to read on mobile devices and for those who do not have images turned on.

Here is the email subject line: Survey: Your Most Recent Southwest Airlines Flight‏

The survey was short and fun!

Here is the survey Thank You!

Nice work Southwest Airlines! Do you have any email experiences with airlines? Do you have other examples of transactional campaigns done well?  Please share with us.