I recently had the opportunity to use Continental's mobile boarding pass. It worked. It was convenient. It saved time. As a clutter-phobe, it was a monumental step in eliminating one more piece of useless paper from my life. Nice job, Continental Airlines. I will use it again and recommend it to everyone, with some qualifiers.After I did the online check-in, I didn’t receive the email containing the mobile boarding pass. I figured something like this would no doubt hit my inbox. I checked my junk mail folder and it wasn’t there. My junk mail folder is the equivalent of email purgatory. I have so many rules to keep my inbox clean (back to my clutter-phobia), that valid emails can easily end up there. The last possibility, my spam folder, is the equivalent of email hell. Three emails usually end up there in a week. To my surprise, my mobile boarding pass containing my scannable QR code, was one of them. This is a great example of why everyone – including savvy IT departments – needs to work with partners who understand email deliverability.
Qualifier #2: Be prepared
Organize your email so the boarding pass is readily accessible. If you’re checking a bag, you’ll need to show it to the security person and again when you’re boarding the plane.
Qualifier #3: Don’t use it if you have a mobile phone / device with a very small screen
My experience with the security guy was pretty telling in terms of the current state of scanning QR and bar codes on a mobile device. When I first showed the security guy my phone, he stared at the screen and said “I don’t see nothing.” Oops, the screen turned off. I turned it back on and gave it to him again.
At that point, he reached under his podium and pulled out a fancy-dancy scanner. He aimed it at the phone, scanned the QR code, and handed the phone back to me. When I enthusiastically said, “Hey, it worked!” he sarcastically replied, “This time.” When I questioned him further, specifically about why it works better on some phones than others, he explained that they have trouble scanning phones with small displays. If they can’t scan it, the customer has to go back and get a paper boarding pass, which would totally suck. So, if you think you have a small display you might just want to start off with a paper boarding pass.
Qualifier #4: It’s more complicated than it seems
It’s wild how little things like touch screens really can make this entire process more complicated than you’d initially think. For example, when I was boarding the plane I gave the lady my phone to scan the boarding pass. She looked at it and said, “It’s blank.” She handed the phone back to me. With people waiting behind me ready to board, I opted to step out of line and see what went wrong.
It turns out that when she was preparing to scan the phone she accidentally touched the display, and inadvertently scrolled the QR code off the screen. After scrolling it back into position, I got back in line and handed her the phone for the second attempt. This time, she typed the boarding pass number into her computer instead of scanning. When I asked why she didn’t scan it, she replied, “This is easier. I should have just typed it in, in the first place.”
As I mentioned, I think Continental did a great job with their mobile boarding pass. The above qualifiers (other than #1) should not be interpreted as gripes. They are definitely pushing the envelope and innovating. It’s extremely valuable for the direct digital marketing industry – companies and vendors alike – to look at (and experience firsthand, when possible) real-world implementations like Continental’s. It definitely provides a glimpse of the convenience and simplicity mobile can deliver when flying, assuming the screen isn’t too small, it doesn’t shut off, and it doesn’t scroll too much.
Football stadiums are an interesting study. They cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build and usually sit on the most prime real estate in a major city. They contain hundreds of employees and are guaranteed to be open only eight days each year. It's hard to believe this is a very profitable business model - but it is.
Companies need to adjust quickly in order to be successful. Project drivers need to use new methods to keep up with the fast-paced technology world while maintaining up-to-date priorities, avoiding new mistakes, and not repeating past ones. We all know mistakes will happen on rare occasions, so how they are handled determines a project’s success. An agile approach to marketing-driven technical projects helps overcome the problems experienced in previous situations, and also works to prevent new obstacles from derailing or delaying a project.
To say that Brian Burns knows his stuff is a bit of an understatement. Knotice's new Director of Infrastructure and Messaging brings a laundry list of accomplishments to the table. From acting as founder and CTO of American National, to Director of IT at Bock & Clark, and Director of Technical Operations at Advanced Elastomer Systems (a subsidiary of ExxonMobil Chemical), Brian knows how to make things happen in the digital world. Knotice is happy to have another savvy team member as we continue to push the envelope.
In my
It's been a busy time here at Knotice thanks to extra attention from our friends in the digital marketing media and our recent series of posts on mobile marketing.
Ah… Sunday morning. A casual walk to the corner newspaper stand or a quick drive to the corner market to pick up the Sunday paper and can check out the coupons. HA! Only if it’s still 1989.
Talk with mobile marketers over a beer and you might hear a couple gripes about all of the hoops we spend time jumping through in order to get SMS campaigns live and messages out. But, why, in the age of Twitter, microwave baking, and dual onboard DVD players – when everything is immediate - is there so much red tape? Why so many hurdles when so many other tactics are basically laissez-faire?
