@JetBlue Tricks and Treats Followers With Mystery Halloween Discounts

On October 21, JetBlue Airways celebrated Halloween early by giving out virtual treats to followers who tweeted with the hashtag #TrickorTweet.

The treats came in the form of mystery discounts, but customers didn’t have long to consume them: The discounts were good only off the base fares of flights booked October 21 for travel on October 31.

While JetBlue manager of market planning Tara Carson would not disclose the number of promo codes JetBlue distributed on October 21, she says, “there is a robust quantity available.” The discounts themselves varied.

“There may be a few that are considered tricks and not as rich of a discount and some that are really rich that we consider the treats,” Carson says.

The so-called treats “could be upwards of 100 percent off,” she says, and a trick could be as little as $1 off.

In order to apply the promo code to roundtrip flights, both the departing and returning flight must be on October 31.

“If you want to take a roundtrip [flight] and return on a different date, the discount will only be applied to travel on the 31st,” Carson says.

According to Carson, #TrickOrTweet originated from a desire to raise awareness about travel on Halloween.

“It’s an off-peak travel day. Business travel slows down because [travelers] want to be home trick-or-treating with their kids, given the family aspect [of the holiday],” she says. “So we wanted to come up with something unique and different to inspire them to get out and travel and offer a rich incentive to do so.”

@JetBlue has 1.8 million followers. According to a rep, the brand generally sees about 300 to 400 new followers a day, but “more than doubled” that number on October 21. As of about 6:00 ET, the rep noted, “We’ve also seen about a 400+ percent increase in mentions.”

According to a rough count of tweets, #TrickorTweet generated approximately 1,900 tweets on October 21. However, many of those tweets were directed to party supply brand @PartyCity, which was also using the hashtag to talk about Halloween movies.

“We’re always happy to see new followers, but we’re really excited by the chance to connect with our existing followers in a fun new way,” the rep adds.