American Express card holders can use the Twitter online messaging service to get exclusive discounts and other deals from more than a dozen retailers under a partnership announced Tuesday.
Card holders signing up for the service can tweet a Twitter hashtag, or search term, that’s unique to a specific offer. After the purchase, deal savings are automatically credited to that customer’s American Express card statement within one to three days.
Customers with American Express consumer or business card accounts can visit a website https://sync.americanexpress.com/twitter to sync their card with Twitter and qualify for the deals. That involves entering a name, card number and email address.
The service is designed to streamline the use of social media to take advantage of discounts. A customer can stay on Twitter to qualify for a deal rather than being re-directed to a merchant’s website, entering a promotion code and printing a coupon. A clerk at a checkout stand doesn’t need to be notified about the discount because tweeting the deal’s hashtag loads the offer onto a customer’s card account. Savings are passed on to the customer if a qualifying purchase is made.
Typical offers are expected to be of the ‘Buy $50 worth of items, get $10 back’ variety, said Ed Gilligan, vice chairman with New York-based American Express Co.
Sixteen retailers signed up for Tuesday’s launch, ranging from Best Buy, Dell, McDonald’s and Ticketmaster to Whole Foods Market. The retailers aren’t paying to participate.
For American Express, the launch is a new avenue for its 97 million existing card holders to get discounts, while also potentially attracting new customers. Card holders who tweet deal hashtags send information about the offers to their Twitter followers. But to qualify, those followers will have to be American Express card holders — a requirement that could entice non-customers to open AmEx accounts.
For Twitter, the launch is the latest step to create a moneymaking business model through advertising and promotions. The San Francisco-based messaging service has attracted more than 100 million users since its creation nearly six years ago.
Terms of the partnership announced Tuesday between American Express and Twitter were not disclosed.
It’s not the first time the two have collaborated. Last month, Twitter introduced a service that’s available initially to advertisers who accept or use American Express cards. It’s an automated system geared toward small businesses enabling advertisers to manage their marketing campaigns and budgets without having to deal with sales representatives. Later this year, Twitter will open the service up to advertisers who don’t accept or use American Express cards.
Linda Lavin, Tony-Winning Actor Who Starred In The Sitcom “Alice,” Dies At 87
Linda Lavin, a Tony Award-winning stage actor who became a working class icon as a paper-hat wearing waitress on the TV sitcom "Alice," has died. She was 87.
Lavin died in Los Angeles on Sunday of complications from recently discovered lung cancer, her representative, Bill Veloric, told The Associated Press in an email.
A success on Broadway, Lavin tried her luck in Hollywood in the mid-1970s. She was chosen to star in a new CBS sitcom based on "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore," the Martin Scorsese-directed film that won Ellen Burstyn an Oscar for playing the title waitress.
The title was shortened to "Alice" and Lavin become a role model for working moms as Alice Hyatt, a widowed mother with a 12-year-old son working in a roadside diner outside Phoenix. The show, with Lavin singing the theme song "There's a New Girl in Town," ran from 1976 to 1985.
The show turned "Kiss my grits" into a catchphrase and co-starred Polly Holliday as waitress Flo and Vic Tayback as the gruff owner and head chef of Mel's Diner.
The series bounced around the CBS schedule during its first two seasons but became a hit leading into "All in the Family" on Sunday nights in October 1977. It was among primetime's top 10 series in four of the next five seasons. Variety magazine listed it among the all-time best workplace comedies.
Lavin soon went on to win a Tony for best actress in a play for Neil Simon's "Broadway Bound" in 1987.
She was working as recently as this month promoting a new Netflix series in which she appears, "No Good Deed," and filming a forthcoming Hulu series, "Mid-Century Modern," according to Deadline, which first reported her death.
Lavin grew up in Portland, Maine, and moved to New York City after graduating from... Read More