"Teaching" a cardholder account to offer a better promo?

[ElainePDX]

Both my H and I are Club Carlson cardholders, and we both received promo offers recently.

Mine, by email first and then by snail mail: Spend $1300 and then receive an extra bonus point for regular spending up to $2000.

His, only via snail mail: Spend $400 and then receive an extra bonus point for regular spending up to $2000.

We received similar such bonuses before, with his a better deal than mine that time too. We took advantage of both then.

For the latest offer, I've signed up for both of us, but now I am wondering if 1) I shouldn't have signed up for mine, and/or 2) I should not spend anything on mine.

Would the analytics then tell them that I need a better offer to bite? Might that get me better offer next time?

 

[Tyler2]

Hi Elaine, I don't have an answer, just a data point. I too have just received a targeted bonus from what must be the same campaign. I got my entire family to play with me on the Club Carlson credit card so we can back to back two night award redemptions. We get offers like these off and on, maybe it's once per quarter?, I think I've had the card for over two years now. I "spend" the most on my card, and always my spend threshold is the highest. We have four cards in the family and it seems to be almost directly related with spend. The higher the spender, the higher the hurdle. I assume, that they assume, that those who spend more, will spend more to get a bonus. It's probably not normal for two mailers to show up at one household to be compared so easily.

That said, I'm not sure that I really mind the higher threshold. It's a $3.16 savings to me regardless.

Here's why, this card is 5x, when I want to build back up my Carlson point balance I top up the account with a 5k purchase at Simon malls. To me, the bonuses always seem to me like a rounding error on a card that already earns 5x. 5k x 5 = 25,000, with the bonus 27,000, since the max bonus is 2k this go around. It doesn't matter to me if that bonus happens at $1 or $4,999. The 2k bonus takes $400 MS, or at Simon (represented as a fraction of a gc purchase) saves $3.16 in gc fees. So I do sign up for these promos, but then I kind of roll my eyes as I realize how little the bonus really is in the grand scheme of things.