A Clear Hook?
by Joshua Tretakoff | VP, Client Services
Offered as a different perspective to David’s praise of Clear.
I travel often to visit clients, train teams on the usage of our platform, and more. In my last few trips out of the San Francisco Airport, I marveled at three things:
1) It is now a reasonable concept to get from downtown to SFO in less than 30 minutes, for less than $6 (thank you, BART).
2) It is a decadent treat to be able to pick up some of SF’s fabled Dim Sum right in the airport (thank you, Fung Lum).
3) It is now possible to sign up for a “FasTrak” for airport security, allowing you to go to the head of the line, for $100 a year. (thank you (?) GE).
This last one was interesting. Called Clear, the service, on the surface, makes perfect sense to frequent travelers: pay a fee, get prescreened by TSA, record some biometrics, and zoom! No more waiting. Kiosks liberally sprinkled around the airport, usually near First Class check-in, and staffed by 2 attractive, friendly and professional staffers, add to the allure. One of our team already is a Clear card-carrying member, and with the value proposition, why not?
Here’s an example of a compelling hook of a loyalty program that can be derailed by the details behind the program. First, the value proposition itself: it’s not, as is marketed by those kiosk staffers, a “FasTrak” for airport security. You can’t simply bypass the TSA at the checkpoint. Instead, you meet a Clear “concierge” who escorts you to the front(ish) of the security line. Not the First Class security line, mind you: that’s determined by your ticket. In a recent flight, without Clear, my wait time from entering the line to getting to the same spot a Clear member is escorted to was 2 minutes. That means that, if I fly once a week for a year, my net savings from Clear is 208 minutes. That works out to a little over $2 a minute. Ouch. Compare that to the cost of a typical inflight movie ($5): that works out to about $0.05 a minute. Yikes.
SFO can occasionally have longer wait lines, so perhaps the cost comes down to about $1 a minute at worst. Where does this help? When you are running late to a flight. Will you spend $10 if you see an extremely long line to bypass most of it? You bet.
Now, here comes the 2nd potential underminer. The service is currently only available in a dozen airports. Conspicuously absent? Chicago. Atlanta. Washington DC. Seattle. Dallas. Los Angeles. Ouch. Airports that are included? Luckily, if you’re heading to Albany, you’re golden. Little Rock? You’ve got it. To be fair, all of the New York airports are included; even Westchester. But the commonalities of these airports are interesting: they either already have high throughput (NYC, SFO), or are not highly trafficked (Little Rock?). In those locations, how much will Clear actually help?
With those details, this loyalty program looks to have a lot of future churn. They are clearly betting long on the odds that rapid enrollment growth will sway other key airports and perhaps convince TSA to allow further express options. But their target demographic will only briefly tolerate the letdown in promised services; they won’t renew. This means Clear will have to spend more to retain these members…for what is supposed to be a membership program!
Look at your hook: if your program is designed to add benefits over time, and is hampered by restrictions at first, and your primary goals are to build membership and generate revenue, turn your negatives to positives. Market the opportunity to be among the first to benefit. Experiment with introductory pricing or incentives (hey, Clear: how about some frequent flyer miles?) to generate the enrollment and offset future cancellations. Offer aggressive incentives for long term lock-in. Instead of spending big money to market a limited service to a broad market, target your marketing to people who’ve booked certain routes with airlines to the cities you DO service, for instance. And invite your early adopters to be part of the program’s evolution: offer forums for people to give objective feedback, and even rate one location over another.
The best programs offer an easily understandable value proposition, an incentive to join, and reinforcement. Maybe this will soon become Clear?
November 12th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
OK, OK, so you might have found some flaws in my enthusiasm. And with some truth in advertising, I have become so bold with my Clear benefits that I arrived at SFO with only 25 minutes before my flight and was locked out of the check-in kiosk (note to self, check in at home).
This week I am heading to Orlando which is a high volume, poorly configured airport where I nearly missed my flight in September and is a Clear installation. Let’s see how I feel about things next week.