Dear Continental Airlines,

Brendan and I flew back from Austin on Tuesday having just finished an exciting and invigorating weekend at SXSW. There had been much talk of conversions, funnels, and improving metrics. That’s when I realized; I was sitting right infront of a broken conversion funnel: your in-flight DirecTV.

Let’s take a look at the current state of your funnel. My reactions are in bold.

The flight attendant at the gate announces that we’ll have inflight DirecTV
Awesome!
Flight attendants hand out free headphones on the plane.
I have my own, but I appreciate the gesture.
DirectTV is playing on the screens.
Hmm… What should I watch?
An announcement is made that to access DirecTV will cost $6. A 15 minute countdown begins.
What the hell? I have to pay for this thing?

The result: 34 people of the approximately 180 in coach decided to swipe their cards. That’s an 18% conversion rate. If you haven’t already guessed, Brendan and I were not in the aforementioned group.

Your numbers are not good
Ask one of your employees to go for a ride on a Jetblue flight and check out how many people are watching TV. You’re going to find much more than 18% of people tuning in.

Total in-flight TV revenue for the flight was $204. Given how many planes you expect to be DirecTV enabled this year and your current conversion rate, we’re talking $2.3-9MM a year on this initiative (Check the math).

You have a positioning problem
When purchasing in-flight DirectTV from you guys I’m faced with a $6 purchase. This is after I just paid $5 for water, $7 for a sandwich, and $25 on a cab. All of these feel like travel necessities as I would like to stay hydrated, nourished, and get myself to the airport. The DirecTV does not feel like a necessities, it feels like an extra I’m gouged to enjoy.

You can solve this problem
The solution is simple: Raise everybody’s ticket price $3 and make DirecTV “free” for everyone.

You have the opportunity to completely re-frame the purchasing process so that people feel like they are getting a deal. All things being equal, I will pick the flight with free TV instead of the paid TV. Watch from minute 11:11 on of this excellent talk with Dan Ariely to learn why:

Just imagine. What if people picked Continental for the free TV in addition to the enormous number of airports you serve. Sounds like a compelling proposition to me.

Food for thought.

Sincerely,
Chris Savage

Update:

Continental has responded on twitter.