Rove Launches “Built Better” Promo On Bilt Card’s Big Day—What’s Their Endgame?

Today is the launch day for Bilt’s new credit cards, and Rove (cough) is running a promotion “Built Better.”

Through Wednesday, February 11th, Rove has increased offers on shopping, referrals, and Loyalty Eligible hotel bookings and free miles for making an Instagram post.

• 40% more miles on loyalty eligible hotel bookings: they’re giving 7 miles per dollar booking hotels that still earn hotel loyalty points and elite stay credit and are eligible for benefits. The hotel is the one charging your stay.

  Always check hotel pricing against what you can get elsewhere. Sometimes it’ll be a lower rate plus the points, but sometimes they show a higher rate (and higher rewards as well).

• Double referral bonuses: Existing Rove members can refer their friends (and you’re best signing up for an account by being referred). When the new member earns 250 miles in Rove’s program, they receive 1,000 bonus miles and the person referring them receives 1,000 miles plus 10% of their earnings for six months.

• Gift card bonuses: Increased earning through their shopping portal purchasing gift cards: 5x with Giant Eagle, CVS, Amtrak, BP Amoco, Circle K, Shell, Speedway, Disney, Grubhub, Netflix, Starbucks, Instacart, Target, Delta, Southwest, Grubhub, Uber, Marriott and 4x on Visa/Mastercard gift cards

• 250 free points: post on Instagram with hashtag #rovemiles and submitting on their promo site.

I’m not quite sure why they’re running a promo tagged to Bilt’s first day with its new credit cards. It seems like something of a dig but I can’t figure out what, since they do’t have a credit card or merchant partners like Bilt does or a brand tied to housing – and the promos don’t relate Bilt’s ‘2.0’ card launch either. I guess they figure it’s something newsworthy in the points and miles space and mildy spicy gets extra attention?

Rove Miles can be used to book travel directly, or transferred to:

• Star Alliance: Air India Maharaja Club, Lufthansa Miles & More, Thai Airways Royal Orchid Plus, Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles

• oneworld: Cathay Pacific Asia Miles, Finnair Plus, Qatar Airways Privilege Club

• SkyTeam: Aeromexico Rewards, Air France/KLM Flying Blue, Vietnam Airlines Lotusmiles

• Non-alliance: Etihad Guest, Hainan Airlines Fortune Wings Club

• Hotel: Accor Live Limitless

As this point they’re the only one with Lufthansa as a transfer partner, and Lufthansa Miles & More has much better premium class availability for its own members than partners (and opens up the possibility of Lufthansa first class redemptions more than a few days prior to flight).

Ultimately, Rove is trying something very difficult. They want to scale as a loyalty program without an existing customer base. There’s no brand loyalty to Rove. So they need to be ‘overindexed’ – more rewarding than other programs – attract customers. The risk, though, is that customers leave as soon as they stop. So it’s interesting to watch whether they can achieve real scale.

You’re welcome to leave your referral links for Rove in the comments.