Delta's SkyMiles customers now can now "dial for miles", announcing today its partnership with Proximiti Communications, Inc. that will allow SkyMiles members to earn miles when switching their home, home office or small business phone service to Proximiti's broadband VoIP service.

SkyMiles members will earn miles when they replace their traditional phone service with Proximiti's VoIP service. I read the press release and it looks like you earn 7,000 miles when you sign up with one of their residential plans and 35,000 for one of their business plans.

Here's where this promotion went wrong. They are only offering 7,000 (or 35,000) SkyMiles for your initial sign-up - you don't accrue more SkyMiles per minute of use. If Delta was smart they would tie phone usage to SkyMiles to promote more usage. Then again, since most people sign up for the "unlimited plan" with their broadband VoIP offering, VoIP providers want you to use LESS minutes since terminating calls cost money. I guess everything is ass-backwards with VoIP when it comes to promoting and marketing it. Or at least they need to think of new ways of acquiring and retailing VoIP customers. That really is the key thing. VoIP providers are becoming a dime-a-dozen and it looks like VoIP providers will have to come up with creative gimmicks to get customers' attention. I for one get offers in the mail all the time for up to 50,000 or even 100,000 airline miles if only I sign up for their credit card. So 7,000 SkyMiles really doesn't even begin to entice me.

Nice try Proximiti, but you can do better than that.