How to NOT suck at email marketing during the pandemic

Sucks

Doesn't suck

Frontier, I love ya.  Your fares are rock bottom which is often times my first criteria for travel planning.  But your email marketing during this pandemic…. well, it sucks.  You clearly don't care about me.  You don't seem to care what's going on the world.  It appears you only care about making a sale (when no one is buying anything).  I understand it — you want people to think positively, start planning to travel again, and start with flights from your airline.  But in the fine print it says we need to travel by October.  Who knows what the world will look like in October!!  You can say whatever you want about cancellation policies — you're just hoping the oblivious or the blindly optimistic will jump on this deal which helps you, almost exclusively.

IHG, on the other hand, is creating a strong brand association by genuinely recognizing what's important to their audience.  We're not travelling right now.  We're not travelling any time soon.  And they recognize that.  They're thoughtful enough to understand that if anything, all we could really hope for right now is that when we plan to travel again (whenever that may be), the flights, cars, and hotels will be clean.  They've come right out and said just that, and they've even demonstrated HOW they're achieving that.  Not only have they recognized what matters to us and drawn attention to it, they've demonstrated their true commitment to this promise with evidence.  

This dichotomy is easy to spot in such a drastic environment like a pandemic.  But it's also a lesson for marketing in any environment:  Show that you understand your audience and what concerns them, offer a solution, then demonstrate its worthiness.

YOUR TURN

Do you give Frontier a pass because most businesses are trying to do whatever they can to generate any kind of revenue right now?  Or do you agree that brands need to do better at understanding the audience?