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Sites like ours are often writing about the great benefits that various American Express cards offer and the differences between those offerings, but one benefit that all Amex cards offer can also be the most lucrative – access to Amex offers.
Amex offers (very briefly)
Amex offers are the deals that American Express targets to various cards and various cardholders and they usually appear in accounts as ‘spend X & get X back’ offers or ‘get X bonus points when you spend X’ offers or ‘get X bonus points/dollar for spending with this retailer’ offers.
We love these offers because over the period of a year, they can help us claw back a considerable percentage of the annual fees that we pay (in the form of cash back or bonus points) and we love them for one further reason as well.
We love them for the special targeted promotions that Amex sometimes buries within these offers.
These are promotions that can be hugely rewarding, but, as were about to show you, they are promotions that can be easily missed as well.
You should always check your Amex offers in the app & on desktop
When I opened the Amex app on my iPhone this morning (something that I do every weekday morning), this is what my Amex offers page looked like for the Blue Business® Plus Credit Card from American Express.
I wasn’t expecting to see much as I’m pretty good at loading all the offers to my cards as and when I’m targeted (it makes it easier for me to see when a new offer is posted), but this page seemed a little to bare to me.
I wasn’t expecting to see fireworks, but that seemed like a very limited set of offers given that I know Amex loves to promote a card’s benefits within the Amex offers section. I was expecting to see more lines of things that I don’t really need … like suggestions that I should check my credit score.
This led me to reach for my laptop and to pull up my Amex account in desktop format.
Here’s what the Amex offers section for the Blue Business® Plus Credit Card from American Express looked like there:
That’s 11 lines of ‘offers’ compared to just 2 lines I could see in the app.
Sure enough, most of those 11 lines were for things that I have no interest in, but two lines were different. Two lines were very, very interesting.
One line was showing that I could earn 7,000 bonus points up to five times by adding employee cards and having each cardholder make $4,000 of eligible purchases in the first 6 months – terms apply.
Clicking the link brought up this:
The second line (which was by far and away the most interesting), was showing this:
A targeted offer which would allow me to earn 250,000 bonus points when I successfully apply for the Business Platinum Card® from American Express and spend $15,000 on it in the first 3 months of membership (terms apply).
Clicking the link brought up this:
I already have a Business Platinum Card® from American Express (I got a 190,000 point welcome bonus from that one), but the terms of this offer make it clear that this doesn’t preclude me from earning a further 250,000 bonus points by taking out another card.
I value Amex points at 1.5 cents each (based on the value I know we can get out of them with ease) and that values this offer at an incredible $3,750. Not bad for an outlay of $695 (the card’s annual fee).
This is a fantastic offer to be targeted for and it’s an offer I would have missed had I simply relied on what the Amex mobile app was showing me.
Be aware, that this can work in reverse as well.
Back in January, I wrote about a targeted offer which allowed holders of the Blue Business® Plus Credit Card from American Express to earn up to 75,000 bonus points by adding employee cards to their account and meeting spending targets (terms apply), and on that occasion, the offer was only visible in the app and not on the desktop site.
Bottom line
All of this goes to prove two things. Amex offers can be very, very lucrative if you’re paying attention. And you should always check what offers you have been targeted for in the app and on the desktop site.
The standard merchant offers won’t differ between the app and the desktop site, but the offers that Amex itself wants to give you, can often be available in just one of the two formats.
