Someone help me. I’m being bullied by Southwest Airlines.

Actually, a better set of descriptive terms would be pestered, annoyed, or amused, depending on the day.

The source of my discontent is my mailbox. Southwest has sent me a solicitation for its frequent flyer cobrand credit card at least once per month for probably the past 2 years. The mailers are varied in style, size, and color, and each are of high quality. I know the airline is spending significant money on each piece. What’s your guess as a direct marketer? $1? $3?

Whatever the price, it’s all being wasted on me and if they continue to send these mailings, I am going to dig out a receipt for the shredder I recently purchased and send it to them for reimbursement. Their mailers being a big contributor to shortening the lifespan of my shredder, it only seems fair.

In all seriousness, I spend a lot of my time sorting through customer transaction data to create Customer Strategy. When we begin to address how to translate strategy into visible campaigns, we focus on a number of tactical elements, forming a program blueprint for operations. The communications strategy is one key step in the process and I am sincere in attempting to help clients manage their finite marketing budgets to their best advantage. The first step to managing resource allocation is to decide “who” to mail and “what” we should mail to them. There are always value thresholds that trigger certain mailings as well as limits to how much we advise to invest in a specific group of clients.

For instance, if we see a segment of customers attractive to the business on any number of metrics, we’ll test various mailings across the group and measure results. I am pretty doggone sure that if I noticed a segment that I had mailed consistently for more than 1-2 years with no response, I would drop them from the list, at least for a while.

None of what I have just written will surprise an experienced direct marketer. Why then does Southwest continue to mail and mail and mail?

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve come to like the airline and its in-flight experience. And their recently re-launched Rapid Rewards program was extremely well communicated via email and print mail.

Southwest is doing some things well, but inexplicably is impacting my impression of its brand with these non-stop credit card solicitations. Maybe the answer is that their bank partner is driving the mailings, and the partner’s desire for new cards outweighs any concerns about customer experience.

Cobrand relationships carry inherent conflict of interest and must be carefully managed. The bank’s desire for new cards can negatively impact customer impressions of the airline itself. Most consumers will only notice the Southwest branding all over the envelope. The bank’s name is relegated to fine print inside the envelope.

Given this scenario, who do you think stands to gain most from mailing me to death, and who is really taking the risk from a branding perspective? Personally, I would like to be removed from their list and have Southwest award me Rapid Rewards points in exchange for all the money they will save on me.

As Paul Harvey says “now you know the rest of the story”.

As customer centric strategies are given more attention by global brands, efforts to place a value on the customers themselves will evolve. There is recurring talk of building a customer equity model that could be factored into evaluation of a public company’s stock price. After all, customer value is the baseline from which incremental value can be measured and the success of the customer strategy evaluated.

Flying Southwest Airlines recently, I learned a lot about my perceived value to the airline.

Arriving in Tampa on time despite blanketing fog, I realized that I could catch an earlier connecting flight and, in doing so, cut my waiting time in half and possibly avoid a weather delay. I approached the check-in counter and inquired if I could get a seat. “Not if you’re on a restricted fare” was the bland response from the gate agent. Barely containing my sarcasm, I commented that my $500+ round trip fare was not likely to be restricted in any way. “Oh no sir, the agent replied, you have a full fare on the return but not on the way out. If you want to get on board, it will cost $258.”

Not giving up, I tried another approach. I suggested that the airline would not lose anything by putting me in a seat that would otherwise depart empty. The gate agent’s response cut me to the quick.

“We make more money on freight and mail…we’d send the plane out empty if we had to.”

So, there you have it – while Southwest may go through sophisticated mathematical calculations to determine customer value, I was instantly made aware of my perceived value to Southwest – somewhere south of a piece of mail or pallet of fillet knives.

Customer Loyalty is the derived result of blending multiple factors. Quality, convenience, service and price are 4 commonly cited ingredients. Enduring Southwest’s open boarding process, paying a fare equivalent to a legacy carrier, and then harshly learning my value to the airline left me wondering just how good Rapid Rewards would have to be to influence my choice of air carrier in the future.

Remember that even a well constructed loyalty program cannot always outweigh negative aspects of 4 factors mentioned. Based on this customer experience, I am inclined to view any rewards received from this program as closer to combat pay than an aspirational reward.