American Express Membership Rewards - Most profitable (for AMEX) redemption option




troyb
Mar 18, 08, 4:47 pm
I get job descriptions from American Express periodically, and found this one to be interesting. Please see below [emphasis mine]:

Senior Analyst - MR Merchandise Partner Team

Responsibilities of Role:
The Senior Analyst – MR Merchandise Partner Management will report to the Senior Manager and will assist in the management of two of the largest merchandise vendors: Premco & Helix as well as assume responsibility for ongoing initiatives that touch all Merchandise Team members. MR Merchandise is the fastest growing, most cost effective Membership Rewards redemption category for American Express and is an essential component of driving cardmember spend, loyalty and satisfaction.

Specific responsibilities include assisting in the day to day management of vendor partnerships, working with the Merchandise Communications Team in the execution of product catalog mailings, maintaining key metrics reporting and performing one-off analysis for the Merchandise portfolio, owning occasional strategic projects and overseeing day to day management of new Maritz outsource vendor.

Partner Management assistance: managing non-catalog marketing promotions (channels include Exclusives, RewardsWatch and web), portfolio analysis and trending (e.g. tracking brand performance, assessing customer value) and product optimization (e.g. ensuring the proper product mix in the Premco and Helix portfolios). The opportunity will exist to take on a larger part of partner management as this Senior Analyst matures in this role.

Catalog support: our 8 annual guides drive a significant amount of our point burn for the Merchandise Team. This Senior Analyst will be part of the team responsible for proofreading and editing these guides.

Reporting & analysis: weekly and monthly performance metrics data, analysis and trending, monthly portfolio reporting and ad-hoc reporting for the Merchandise team.



Most of those on FT tend to lean toward the travel redemption options, but now I understand why I get bombarded with these catalogs and redemption offers online.


ijkh
Mar 18, 08, 6:03 pm
:confused:Lets see if I get this right:

120k MR pts = rt business class seat to Africa or..........
120k MR pts = $ 1,200 gift cards for Abercrombie and Kent

Lets see my actual award ticket to Africa priced out at around $40,000.00 or I could have made a down payment on part of a trip with the merchandise. You'd have to be brain dead or near dead.

mia
Mar 18, 08, 7:20 pm
...award ticket to Africa priced out at around $40,000.00 ...

Perhaps, but it didn't cost American Express $40,000 to provide it. They just bought the miles from the carrier.


mia
Mar 18, 08, 7:21 pm
Relevant discussion in this thread from August 2007 based on American Express filing with SEC...

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=722302

itsme
Mar 18, 08, 11:18 pm
:confused:Lets see if I get this right:

120k MR pts = rt business class seat to Africa or..........
120k MR pts = $ 1,200 gift cards for Abercrombie and Kent

Lets see my actual award ticket to Africa priced out at around $40,000.00 or I could have made a down payment on part of a trip with the merchandise. You'd have to be brain dead or near dead.
Are you serious about what you would have spent had you purchased the ticket? With what carrier from where to where?

tradewinds525
Mar 19, 08, 10:34 am
Are you serious about what you would have spent had you purchased the ticket? With what carrier from where to where?

BE ticket to Africa is $6-$8k. I have used Delta to get 8 tickets to Africa in the past 5 years.

itsme
Mar 20, 08, 12:14 am
BE ticket to Africa is $6-$8k. I have used Delta to get 8 tickets to Africa in the past 5 years.
OK, 5 award tickets that would have cost up to $40K if purchased, not one award ticket that would have cost up to $40K. (There are no A-B-A tickets much above $20K, are there?)

kennycrudup
Mar 20, 08, 2:14 pm
There are no A-B-A tickets much above $20K, are there?
There's a thread in the UA Forum (IIRC) where someone used KVS to find their most expensive ticket; there's an F-fare that prices at ~$68K to go from ... uh ... I wanna say NYC to somewhere in the South Pacific. There seemed to be quite a few $40K F-fares, too.

ijkh
Mar 20, 08, 9:24 pm
Are you serious about what you would have spent had you purchased the ticket? With what carrier from where to where?

AF Business class

SEA-TNR open jaw JNB-SEA

price it out and see. Not only would the cost have been prohibitive we would have likely needed to bring the price down by doing two rt sea-tnr rt
and tnr-jnb rt. I even considered using the AMEX 241 with this routing. Miles were the plan even if I had to buy a few extra.

fti
Mar 20, 08, 10:50 pm
AF Business class

SEA-TNR open jaw JNB-SEA

price it out and see.

Not that it really makes much difference but SEA-TNR//JNB-SEA in business with AF prices out under $10K including taxes using random dates in May:

SEA AF X/PAR AF TNR//JNB Q115.00M4672.50DUSRT AF X/PAR AF SEA
Q115.00M4672.50DUSRT NUC9575.00END ROE1.0
FARE USD 9575.00 TAX 2.50AY TAX 30.80US TAX 5.00XA TAX 4.50XF
TAX 7.00XY TAX 5.50YC TAX 52.52FR TAX 15.50MG TAX 1.23EV TAX
14.81WC TAX 15.55ZA TOT USD 9729.91



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