How Does American Express Decide Who Receives What AmEx Sync Offer?

Question: I’ve noticed that a lot of the American Express offers are targeted to certain people, sometimes I’ll have the same card as somebody else but won’t see that offer in my account. Why is this and what can I do to make sure I get more offers in my account?

Taylor

Answer: American Express lets the merchant that is offering the Sync offer determine who does and doesn’t receive the offer. They can choose to let everybody receive it or they can target it using the following metrics:

• Card type:  In some cases the merchant will want to target people with certain cards. For example, they might want to only target only high networth individuals in which case they would choose cards that have a high annual fee. They might also want to target those who are frugal, in which case they could select only cards with no annual fee.
• Geography: If the merchant only has stores on the East Coast there is very little point in advertising to people who live on the West Cost and vice versa. They might also want to only target those in a small area when a new store launches or any other number of reasons.
• By store: A merchant can choose to target people who have or haven’t made a purchase at your store within the last X period of time. They might do this to reward loyalty (e.g Thank-you for shopping with us, here is a special offer since you use your card at our store) or to encourage somebody who has previously used their store but is no longer doing so (e.g Please consider shopping with us again).
• By category: Merchants can target those who have used their card in a particular category (e.g Costco could target anybody who has made a purchase at a discount warehouse or grocery store).

They can also target by more than one of these at once. For example, they could choose to target somebody who has a Blue Cash Preferred, lives in California and has made a purchase at a discount warehouse within the last twelve months. We’re also sure that there are a variety of other factors that they can sort by (e.g annual spend on the card, cardholder length etc etc).

Your best bet is to just regularly check your American Express offers and hope you are targeted. They also regularly have offers that are open to everybody which you should keep an eye out for.