By Greg Jarboe
The Southwest Airlines case study continues to be one of the top stories that gets told and retold by anyone seriously interested in press release optimization. (I should disclose that Southwest Airlines has been a client since January 2004.)
One of the reasons why our success story is still being used as a "wake-up call" for public relations agencies and departments is the fact that no one has topped it. Since February 2004, Southwest Airlines has used optimized press releases to sell $2.5 million in tickets.
Another reason why the Southwest Airlines case study seems to have "legs" is fact that it keeps getting better each time it gets retold. No, it's not one of those fish stories. The data just keeps getting updated. You can get a sense of its momentum by looking at the titles of the earlier versions of this success story.
On April 6, 2004, I wrote the first iteration of the Southwest Airlines case study for KDPaine's Measurement Standard. The title was, "You Are Now Free to Link PR and Sales: How Southwest Airlines sold $42,000 in tickets with one press release."
The press release in question had hit the wires on February 12, 2004, with a headline that read, "Southwest Airlines Offers Low Fares to Philadelphia; Airfare to Philadelphia as Low as $29 to $99 One-Way." It included a unique URL in the release that offered further information and linked consumers to the point-of-sale. This link provided a means for tracking sales directly attributable to the press release.
On June 15, 2004, Angela Vargo of Southwest Airlines and I co-presented an updated version of our case study at the Internet Planet conference in New York. The title of our presentation was, "Innovative Marketing: What's Working for Southwest Airlines." We reported that our optimized press release for the Philadelphia launch had now generated more than $80,000 in ticket sales.
On September 22, 2004, Angela and I co-presented an updated and expanded version of our success story at The Measurement Summit conference in New Hampshire. Our new title was, "Turning Press Releases into Ticket Sales - Measuring Results that Really Matter."
In addition to retelling the Philadelphia launch story, we also shared two new ones. An optimized press release entitled, "Southwest Airlines Spanish-Speaking Customers Can Now Make Their Online Flight Reservations in Spanish at southwest.com/vamonos," had generated $38,000 in ticket sales. And another entitled, "Southwest Airlines Treats Customers to 22 New Daily Nonstop Flights with Low Fares Starting at $29 One-Way," had generated more than $1 million in ticket sales.
On October 27, 2004, MarketingSherpa published yet another updated version of the Southwest Airlines case study. The headline read, "How Southwest Airlines sold $1.5 million in tickets by posting four press releases online."
On November 6, 2004, Linda Rutherford, the Director of PR for Southwest Airlines, did a PR News webinar about measurement with Katie Paine. Linda reported, "To date, Southwest PR has generated more than $1.9 million in sales from news releases."
In late May 2005, I wrote an article for DM News that was published on July 25, 2005. It was entitled, "Savvy marketers are using press release optimization to increase web traffic, internet leads and online sales." One of the examples that I gave was Southwest Airlines, which had tracked $2.3 million in ticket sales back to unique links in a series of optimized press releases distributed since February 2004.
On September 14, 2005, I download the Executive Summary of MarketingSherpa's Search Marketing Benchmark Guide for 2005-2006. It said that optimized press releases are one of the "top trends we've identified in search marketing for 2006."
According to the research firm, now that the public can read press releases directly on various news search engines, including Google News and Yahoo News, they make great response devices for the search-using public.
"For example, marketers for Southwest Airlines used four press releases deliberately written with search engine optimization and consumer response in mind, to sell $1.5 million in tickets in 90 days. Every ticket sales was directly traceable to links in the releases," said MarketingSherpa.
On September 28, 2005, I got an email from Merrill Rose, a consultant to the Council of Public Relations Firms, who was working on a booklet entitled, "Measuring the Impact of Public Relations on Sales."
Angela had already shared with Merrill what Southwest Airlines had been doing with my counsel. Merrill wanted to know if it was OK to reference SEO-PR as a resource for further information on this method. The consultant didn't need to twist my arm to get me to say OK.
A month lager, I got an email from the Institute for Public Relations congratulating Southwest Airlines and SEO-PR for winning the 2005 Golden Ruler of Measurement. According to David Michaelson, Chair of the Golden Ruler Award Committee, our case history was selected because it provides "a solid example of using new media and new techniques to tie public relations to sales."
The Golden Ruler Awards Committee is also requesting as part of our acceptance of the award that we prepare a detailed case history of our submission that is consistent with other case histories that appear on the Institute for Public Relations website.
The members of the awards committee don't need to twist my arm to get me to tell the Southwest Airlines case study again. It continues to be one of our top stories. You can read it at http://www.instituteforpr.org/awards/2005_golden_ruler_winner.
Oh, by the way, since then the data has been updated - again. As of late 2005, Southwest Airlines had used optimized press releases to sell over $3 million in tickets.
Greg Jarboe is a partner in Newsforce. He is also the president of SEO-PR, a search engine optimization firm and public relations agency.
