It would be nice if airlines, hotels, car rental and credit card companies change policy and START TARGETING those of us who are loyal to them. As an example, AMEX has double points for folks who don't spend alot of money so they can spend more. What about me? I spend thousands per month and I get nothing. Same thing haoppens with hotels and car rental companies. I guess LOYALTY TO THE CONSUMER is dead!!!

If you spend thousands and get nothing I would recommend the Starwood Optima card which will get you thousands of miles

If you spend thousands and thousands with them, then they don't need to promote anything to you. You are already doing it, it would be a waste of money on their part to try and get you to do something you are already doing.

They know it's much easier getting a $100 charge per month guy up to $1,000 then it is to get a $10,000 up to a $50,000.

So here is the question for the marketeers:

What sort of spending pattern should you have to trigger promotions?

e.g. Three months at one hotel chain, three months at another and repeat?

-- Dambus

Precisely. Sad to say, but precisely.

I have seen this very recently in Marriott and Delta targeted promotions which do seem to leave out their most very loyal customers, since they have already *got* us patronizing them.

It is typically much cheaper to retain a customer than to acquire a new one.

That said, the whole idea of targeted marketing campaigns is to change future behavior of specific current customers or future prospects. By targeting the campaign, the cost is much lower than if the offer is made to the general populace.

In an Acquisition campaign, the company looks for prospects with high potential profitibility. In an Expansion campaign, they look for existing customers who may give the company a bigger slice of their business. Retention campaigns are (sadly) probably the least common, and tend to target customers with high perceived risk of erosion (less business) or attrition (leaving altogether).

The point is, if you have been giving the company a lot of your business, at a steady level, for years and years, unless you fall in some odd demographic bucket, you are perceived as "not at risk" and are not likely to attract any high value/cost offers.

Is this a lack of Loyalty? It's not about Loyalty, it's about profitibility. And that's a two way street. If another card came along with all the same benefits, but triple miles always, most of us would switch in a second, no matter how well Amex had treated us in the past.

I think the Internet is changing the playing field. In the past, it was easy for a business to give a targeted promotion to selected customers, because the customers not selected would likely never know that other people had been given a better deal than they had. That is increasingly becoming no longer the case. Businesses now risk alienating their best customers, if those customers think that the companies now consider themselves to be "chopped liver". As a compromise position, I think businesses that use targeted promotion should also offer the same promotion to its non-targeted customers if the non-targeted customers ask for it.

Of course, this is still a problem with promotions like the AMEX one, where not only is it targeted, but the precise nature of the offer that is offered varies. I'm one of the ones feeling disgruntled, since I use my Hilton Hhonors AMEX as my first choice card, and was apparently not targeted for the promotion. I've been waiting to buy bonds until the right promotion comes along. I guess I'll wait a little longer.

The internet in general and boards like FT make targted promos more of a problem because very rapidly, many of the the "elite" customers who were not targeted will learn that they have been ignored. Look at the Delta promo which offered double base miles 8/1/02 to 10/15/02 to some medallion members. There was such an uproar from many other Platinum and Gold members that Delta eventually retraced their steps and opened the promo to ALL medallions who registered.

AMEX skymiles Platinum does reward their spenders. I get 10000 base miles every year as long I spend $25,000. High spenders do get extended credit limits and other perks, e.g. 100K per year spenders can possibly get invitations for the Centurion (Black) card, which carries a lot of clout. Everyone needs to look at the positive...how many big spenders did not sign up for double miles, USAIR's GOM, Valuemags, Latinpass, etc. Knowledge rules! FT makes it happen, otherwise (for non-FT'rs anyway) ignorance is bliss.