An airline relationship can go quiet for months. A member books, flies, collects and then has little reason to think about the programme until the next trip appears in the calendar. Meanwhile a rewards balance sits untouched and the membership becomes a card in a wallet app. Marketing has to give that person a useful reason to come back during the quiet months, without pretending that every message should end in a flight booking.
The work behind this article sat inside an international loyalty commerce portfolio. For a major Gulf carrier, the documented scope covered integrated strategy, member communication, acquisition and engagement across digital and other programme channels. We describe the portfolio itself in the wider programme marketing system. This piece asks one narrower question: what should a member hear between flights, and when should they hear it?
The quiet months are when the programme earns its place
For the airline, the flight is the event. For the loyalty programme, the time between flights is where the relationship is built or quietly lost. If the only programme contact a member receives is a pre-departure upsell and a post-trip statement, they learn something unhelpful: the programme only matters when they travel. For an occasional flyer, that can mean most of the year passes without a single reason to open the app.
A programme with options outside travel has something to say in that gap. The difficulty is saying it well. A generic reminder that “your points are waiting” makes a sophisticated programme sound vague, and sent to everyone on a fixed schedule it teaches members to ignore the sender. Silence has its own cost: when the member finally hears from the programme again, they have forgotten what it offers and the explanation has to start from nothing.
So the real planning question is about timing. Which members have a genuine reason to hear from the programme now, what is that reason, and what should stay unsaid until later? The airline identity stays central throughout, because these messages arrive from a carrier the member already trusts with something important.
Who is waiting between flights, and what they already know
We begin by separating people by what they know about the programme, not by assumptions about their income or how often they fly. Knowledge decides what a message needs to explain. Travel history alone does not.
Three members, three starting points
New member
Joined recently, often at booking. Knows the programme exists, may not know what it does between trips. Needs a short explanation of usefulness before any request.
Occasional traveller
Understands the basics but rarely thinks about the membership. May have a balance and no idea what it can do. Needs one specific, current reason to look.
Established participant
Has used the programme and knows where to go. May have overlooked a newer option. Needs a direct prompt, not a repeat of the introduction.
A fourth state cuts across all three: the member who used to participate and has stopped. They do not need the welcome message again, but they may need a fresh explanation of why the programme is useful, because whatever they once understood has faded. Frequent and occasional travellers also differ in how much airline communication they already receive. Someone who flies often hears from the carrier constantly through booking confirmations, check-in prompts and service updates. A programme message competes with all of that, so it has to be sparing and plainly relevant.
Timing by member need, not by the calendar
The usual way to plan loyalty contact is a monthly calendar: one newsletter, one offer, one reminder, every member. It is easy to run and hard to make relevant. We plan the between-journeys programme around changes in the member’s situation instead. Each stage below is triggered by something the programme can observe, and each has a single job.
A between-journeys contact plan, by member need
- Just joinedShow what the membership is for beyond the next flight, in one clear example.
- Balance buildingPoint to one specific thing the balance can do now, with where to begin.
- Option overlookedIntroduce a use an established member has not tried, briefly and without the basics.
- Interest shown, no actionAnswer the question most likely to have stopped them, then offer the next step.
- Gone quietRe-explain why the programme is useful today, as if to a returning guest.
- Trip approachingLet the airline’s service messages lead; programme content steps back.
The last stage matters as much as the first. When a member is about to travel, their attention belongs to the trip: the booking, the baggage allowance, the gate. A programme offer arriving in the middle of that can feel like noise, and it competes with messages the member genuinely needs. Holding programme content back near travel, and returning once the trip is over, respects the order in which the member’s priorities actually fall.
None of these triggers needs a fixed interval. A member can sit in “balance building” for a long time and should not receive the same nudge every few weeks while they do. What moves them to a new stage is a change in their behaviour or the programme’s offer, not the date. Where the data cannot tell you which state a member is in, it is better to say so and use a broader, more explanatory message than to pretend to a precision the audience data does not have.
Deciding who hears from you, and how often
Relevance depends on programme eligibility and available audience data, not on the size of the mailing list. A brief for a between-journeys message should state which members qualify, which are excluded and why. Clear selection rules make the campaign easier to assess afterwards, and they spare members the confusion of receiving an offer they cannot use. An ineligible member who clicks, reads and then discovers a condition that rules them out is less likely to open the next message.
Frequency follows the same logic. We would agree a ceiling on programme contact per member, separate from the airline’s operational messages, and a rule for what happens when two campaigns want the same person in the same week. The member experiences one sender, even if three teams are briefing it. This is the centre of the work we describe as keeping member communication useful between purchases: fewer messages, each with a reason the member would recognise.
Timing comes first because it decides who is in the room. What each message then says, and the order in which a sequence unfolds, are separate decisions that sit on top of it. Getting the timing right with an average message usually beats a beautifully written message sent to the wrong member at the wrong moment.
Channel notes for between-journeys contact
The broader portfolio included email, social, paid channels and inflight services. We would choose channels by the member’s stage and the permissions the programme holds.
- Short exposure (social, paid, in-app): introduces an option to people who may not open email. Too brief to carry conditions.
- Email: room to explain to known members with permission. Works best when it carries one action.
- Information page: the reference point every other channel sends people to. It must stand on its own.
- Inflight and travel-day moments: useful for awareness while the airline is front of mind, poor for anything that needs careful reading.
Repeating the same creative in every channel creates visibility but not understanding. Each channel should do the part of the explanation it is suited to.
Participation and flight booking are different outcomes
The easiest way to undermine a between-journeys programme is to judge it by flights. If every programme message is expected to produce a booking, the programme becomes a sales channel with a loyalty badge, and the members who are not ready to travel learn to tune it out. The commercial objective here is a relationship with more useful points of participation. Bookings may follow, but they are a different measure with different causes.
Different outcomes
Did the member use the programme?
Measured by completed programme actions between trips. Influenced by timing, relevance, explanation and the destination page. This is what between-journeys communication is designed to move.
Did the member travel?
Driven by schedules, fares, routes, work and family plans. Programme communication may play a part, but crediting it with a booking needs transaction evidence and a defined scope.
Keeping the two apart also makes reporting more useful to the programme team. Reports should separate message response, website activity and completed participation, and where data supports it, new and returning members. If few relevant members click, the timing or the proposition may be wrong for that stage. If plenty click and few participate, the problem probably sits after the click, which is a design question for the destination; we look at that in making participation steps easier. Either reading is more useful than declaring success because a campaign reached a large number of inboxes.
What to take into your own programme
If you run a travel loyalty programme, or any membership people use only occasionally, the practical steps are much the same.
- List the member states you can genuinely observe. If you cannot tell a lapsed participant from a new one, fix that before planning more sends.
- Give each state one action and one reason, written in the member’s terms.
- Decide when the programme stays quiet, especially around travel.
- Write selection and frequency rules into every brief, including who is excluded.
- Report participation and bookings separately, and review them by member stage.
The aim is modest and commercially sound: a member who hears from the programme a little less often, understands it a little better each time and finds something worth doing before the next flight comes round.
