Automated emails does sound look a nice touch though. Surely wouldn't be to hard to impliment.
While I can see the value in the OPs suggestion, it is actually quite hard to implement given the current architecture.
You need to understand that the PNR/Departure control systems are entirely separate from the loyalty and EDM (electronic direct marketing) systems - especially at legacy and/or flag carriers such as QF. The fact your monthly emails may include a points balance that's several weeks old should be a good indication of this difficulty. And that's before considering there's nearly 8 million members to communicate information to.
As I understand it, until recently QFF's loyalty system was
still run on 50s programming technology (Fortran) with just as antiquated data storage methods. In recent times, the data was
moved to an Oracle Siebel platform with data warehouse (
from Teradata if I remember rightly) which has in part aided better use and pax profiling.
Having said that, there's still a long way to go before any airline much less QF was able to send a thank you message every time you flew and points posted to your account from same.
There also resides a view in QFF, held by their former CEO and now CEO of QFi, Simon Hickey, that people especially those under the age of 45 simply don't use email any more. This was a point touched on at last years Rockpool function when discussing changes to the loyalty bonus and member communications.
Despite their perception on email use, they've not investigated or implemented alternative methods for member communications. They already have SMS infrastructure in place for boarding passes & delays that could be used for points posting/thank you alerts; and there's also the social networking communication aspect that could be used to deliver such messages that remains unexplored.
Given time, carriers will grasp the available opportunities, and allow you to receive this and many other communications you choose to receive as technology and capacity increases, and connectivity to outside social networks become common place. It is still worth mentioning ideas like this in forums like AFF as senior carrier staff peruse them to keep abreast of what we're thinking, looking for, or being let down by.
