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Several years ago I started receiving targeted offers, by mail, from Amex for their Business cards. Specifically, every month or two I received an offer for 100,000 Membership Rewards points after $10K spend for signing up for the Business Platinum card. The interesting thing about these offers was that it was pretty clear how Amex got my “business” name. The offers were addressed, not to me, but to a domain name that I had registered approximately 6 months earlier. At the time, I was pretty sure (but not positive) that I hadn’t used that name anywhere else. So, I thought that Amex had pulled my info from the domain registration, but I wasn’t completely sure.
Fast forward to this past year: my 15 year old son registered a new domain in August of 2014. Then, a couple of weeks ago, he received his first ever credit card offer: the Business Gold Rewards card from Amex. The offer was only for 50,000 points, but that’s not the important thing. The important thing was that the offer came by mail and was addressed to his domain name. Clearly Amex found his info there and used it for this targeted offer. Note too that my son never even created a website for his domain. The only thing he has done with it is register the name.
Amex most likely scrapes business information from WHOIS data. Domain registry information is publicly available through site’s like this: whois.icann.org/en/lookup. Here’s an example of a search for BoardingArea.com:
The search returns the name and address of the business behind Boarding Area (RAN Decisions, Inc.). I bet that RAN Decisions frequently receives great offers from Amex.
Getting targeted Amex business card offers
My assumption, based on the experiences described above, is that anyone can get targeted Amex business card offers simply by registering a new domain name, or by editing the contact info for an existing domain name. Make sure to enter an Organization name and a valid address. And, based on my son’s experience, I don’ t think it is even necessary to do anything with the domain name once you have it. Simply registering it so that it is publicly available for lookup should be enough.
Keep in mind that 6 to 9 months are likely to elapse before you receive any offers.
For those wondering: No, my son won’t apply for the Business Gold card. Once he’s 18 we’ll get him started with the basics such as the Chase Freedom card and maybe a Discover card. Then, once he builds up his credit profile a bit, he’ll be ready to start earning real rewards.
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[…] Greg at Frequent Miler has a great post on this. Basically it seems as if American Express scraps business information from WHOIS data and sends out targeted offers based on that. Frequent Miler points out that there is often a long lead time (e.g 6- months before you receive your offer). […]
Greg, I followed your method here, didnt have high expectations after X months of no mailer, then suddenly a targeted mailer with RSVP code arrived at my home! Question is, could I now use my own name as the name for the SP business? The targeted mailer was addressed to my domain name (which is obviously not my true name), and on the online app, it was pre-populated with the domain name (but I noticed i can update it)
Thanks!
This is exactly how I got mine. It was addressed to xyz business and then I just put my other business name that I wanted the credit card for. (I have two different businesses) no questions asked when I switched the names.
Thanks Lena!
Did you get instant approval ?
How recent was your application?
So it is OK to change/update business names then?
You kept the same address, right? So what i mean is address of business = address where targeted mailer is sent to
You can change whatever information fits for the business applying. It doesn’t have to be the same address that the mailer was sent to.
Yes, I did get approved instantly. And it was actually last April when I got approved. My address stayed the same, not sure if changing it would affect it in any way. Hope this helps
OK great, thanks both for your help!
jgx, Lena:
I’m curious how many months went by after setting up your domain before you started receiving offers? I think it took 6 or 7 months for my son
I had already been in business for two years but had recently relocated from Chicago to Dallas. And set up a new business formation with Texas. It wasn’t too long after that. I had s great targeted offer at the time. Get 100k after $10k spend within 3 months, then for each $5k receive 25k points up to 50k extra points. So I had to spend $20k to get 150k points! Which was easy because I purchase a lot of inventory. It was a great deal
[…] son regularly gets Amex credit card offers by mail (thanks to having setup a website domain a few years ago), but until very recently they all included the lifetime language. Then, about a week ago, that […]
[…] business credit cards since they can pull your contact information from publicly available records. The Frequent Miler writes that this could take up to 6 to 9 months for an offer to be sent out to you (at least for […]
[…] To get targeted business card offers, one option is to buy a web domain. I discuss this option here: How to (maybe) receive targeted Amex business card offers. […]
How would you change the organization for your domain? Is it through the site you purchased the domain from?
Yes, exactly. For example, if you buy a domain through GoDaddy you can log into your GoDaddy account and update the organization info
[…] Register a URL with your real info: https://frequentmiler.com/2015/04/29/how-to-maybe-receive-targeted-amex-business-card-of… […]
Nice find! I have a couple of domains under my name. I should change one to my wife’s name 😀
[…] How to get targeted Amex business card offers […]
[…] I’m guessing that whoever did this also received some targeted Amex business card offers. […]
I set up several LLC’s and began receiving Amex offers.
I have many domains for many years, all of them with open whois. I don’t get offers from Amex (I have 3 personal and 1 business cards from Amex).
Most likely they will first target by sites with high traffic say from Alexa or google not just by registering domain or opening a website.
What kind of site was it, what registrar, was there a shopping cart?
My son never setup a site, he just bought the domain.
Was that name brand new?
Is it coming up in the way back machine at archive.org ?
Yes it was brand new. Never hosted a site on that domain
[…] with both Amex Business Platinum and Gold card offers. The second option has been discussed a bit on the comments of this blog and elsewhere in the past, but I’m including it here as well for those who might not already […]
[…] How to (maybe) receive targeted Amex business card offers (The Frequent Miler). Not interested in this! […]
I’ve had domains for ages with multiple registrars (including GoDaddy), but never received an offer…