Give every passenger a one time freebie in exchange for setting up an account for crying out loud. First session is on us. Try it. We hope you like it.
I flew home on Delta from NYC on Tuesday night and the plane happened to have the new GoGo Wifi service. I’ve tried them all in the past, and in the interest of testing I went through a 15 minute sign up on my BlackBerry bold, paid about $7.95 for privilege, used it for 15 successful minutes, and wondered the entire time why there is a seperate $9.95 rate of laptop users.
Bad marketing though. Give me a freebie on first use, a taste to get me addicted, and subsequent flights should see the dollars flow. I know the service costs like $100,000 per plane to install, but asking me to pay for the proverbial pig in a poke? Get me to log in, create an account, give you an email address, then spam the snot out of me. Sloppy acquisition marketing drives me nuts.
Wifi didn’t work for Boeing and its Connexion service. It was too expensive and too early. Paying for connectivity just pisses me off to no end, but squandering a sign up opportunity drives me even nuttier.