American Express launches loyalty consultancy

American Express has launched LoyaltyEdgeSM, a practice area that will help the company's corporate clients develop or enhance loyalty programs. Delta Air Lines is the first client of the unit, which was announced January 22.

“We have had a long, multifaceted relationship with Delta,” said American Express spokesperson Mona Hamouly. “When we renewed our multi-faceted co-brand agreement with them at the end of 2008, this was part of that agreement.”

The division offers program design and execution, loyalty and redemption options, customer service, targeted marketing and analytics services based on the needs of clients.

“We have a lot of experience with loyalty programs, and we decided that now was the right time to expand that experience to our strategic partners to help [clients] implement, enhance or change their loyalty programs to drive bottom line results,” Hamouly explained.

The company recently launched a business insights arm, which aggregates transactional data to help clients segment customers. While the two launches are not related, Hamouly said that American Express is exploring various ways to help its clients acquire and retain customers.

“The timing [of the launches] is more coincidental than anything else, but what both new divisions have in common is that we realized we had assets, information and expertise in areas outside of just being a payment processor,” she said.

A Delta representative could not be immediately reached for comment.