Southwest’s Ding!: Brilliant Web Marketing
Southwest Airlines’ Ding! is brilliant. I’ve taken three Southwest flights in the past month, as it happens, and I’ve found myself spending some time on the Southwest site as a result. Curious (having seen the TV commercial — oh no, TV commercial works!), I decided to spin over to the Ding page and found — to my surprise — that there’s a Mac version of Ding. (I’d assumed it was a Window system tray thing.) I downloaded it, launched it, and it’s been running in the background ever since. (It would make more sense as a Dashboard widget, but I’m not complaining.)
Here’s why it’s brilliant: It makes you want to go see what flights are available. Then, if you’re like me, you get in your head the idea of making one of the deals work for you. I find myself literally shopping a product/service I don’t “need” and trying to decide whether to pay the company anyway.
I guess in one way, it’s “sale” shopping at its finest — you’re so enthused at the idea of saving money that you’ll spend a little money to save it. Like Macy’s midnight sales, you kinda go just because you might “save” money…even if you end up spending more than you’ve got in the budget this month.
So far (in about four days) I haven’t taken advantage of a Ding rate, but the idea of getting a round trip for less than $200 on the spur of the moment is tempting. If I’m lucky, I’ll be able to use it for business travel — I’m anticipating 4-5 trips in the next few months — but if I’m not, maybe I’ll see the perfect rate for bopping over to Florida to see mom for a long weekend, or jumping up to Denver to visit my brother’s family and some friends in the area…who knows.
What I do know is that I’m not likely to surf the Southwest site once or twice a day to see if a good fare pops up for a place I’m not anticipating going; with Ding, it’s done for me. Good job.
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