Get Your Damn Points!!!
7 tips to power-level your loyalty status (or what I wish I knew 5 years ago)
In 2017, I traveled the world several times for conferences, and without even trying, I got to Silver status with Delta and nearly Silver status with Marriot. That’s when I got my first free upgraded seat, and I was happy! …
I figured Silver status is what you get for lots of traveling and that’s what everyone does, right?
I was wrong!
Fast-forward to today, I’m Delta Platinum with less travel, and I add new miles every time I order food or grab a coffee. LINKING is how you play the game.
In this article we’ll cover:
- Get a linked rewards Credit Card
- Link Instacart
- Link your Uber and Uber Eats account
- Link your Lyft Account
- Link your Starbucks Account
- Link your OTHER cards with Marriot “Eat Around Town”
- Link your Marriot to your Delta
The trick is linking seemingly-unrelated accounts.
What Do You Get with Loyalty Status?
Imagine showing up to your flight, and finding out your seat just got bumped to first class without you asking, and you get access the staff via shorter lines and high quality customer service. Loyalty status is who gets these Delta freebies and the same goes for Marriot upgrades with room gifts and lounge access.
Does this ever actually happen?
It literally just did. Look what showed up in my email:
That seat upgrade is generally twice the cost of my initial ticket. I’d never purchase such an upgrade, but I’ll happily accept it for free! Airports and hotels kinda suck, but loyalty status is the frugal solution to reclaim some creature comforts with style.
Gant, Do I Really Need This? 🤡
I hear your first complaint, “OK, but maybe I don’t fly as often as you do. It’s probably not worth it for me.” I understand learning a loyalty program is annoying and feels like a 3-ring circus. Not even a good 3-ring circus, but like those creepy ones where clowns follow you around and smoke hand-rolled cigs, have yellow teeth, and keeps calling you “sonny-boy”…. eesh!
So why should you jump into this?
SkyMiles with Delta never expire, and if you plan just two trips at a Marriot, you can probably reach Silver status. So my answer to your earlier question is this.
Yes, it’s worth doing the minimum now, so you can rack up and cash in later.
Most of what I’m going to show you will take you a little time to setup, and you’ll be able to forget it’s even there. One day you’ll check your status, and it will have activity because you started with linking accounts in this article.
CAVEAT: I’m in the USA, I have no clue how well this works for my friends around the globe. I’m sure some of this info transfers, but probably not all.
What do I need to do?
You should have your Marriot (sign up here) and Delta (sign up here) loyalty numbers linked to all kinds of partner programs, so that you’re constantly gaining rewards. And if you’re like my family, you can earn points while you sleep, because that’s when my wife generally stays up and spends all my money.
It’s time to link accounts to get up to 5x on your points, somewhere you were getting ZERO points and just losing them altogether. It’s worth noting, I only know Delta/Marriot. If you’re looking for how to link other airlines and hotels, I’m not your guy. There are plenty of resources (this new newsletter is full of tips! https://dailydrop.com/), so if you’re loyal to a different set of hotels and airlines, go figure them out now! And tell me about your blog post.
You need a Delta account with a SkyMiles number and a Marriot Bonvoy account. These accounts have specific numbers that you’ll use to reference your loyalty.
CAVEAT: Linking accounts costs you nothing, but it does give more companies access to your habits and activities. I’ve not seen any bump in marketing towards me, after linking my accounts, but I do know, there’s a lot of computers out there that now know I like to drink coffee, eat, and travel. If you’re against having habits shared with 3rd parties, this isn’t going to work for you.
OK, enough delay! Here’s the 7 tips to get your loyalty status into the stratosphere!
The Basics: A Credit Card Goes Far
You’ve probably heard about credit card miles. This is the best/easiest way to multi-dip into free benefits. If you’re working on getting credits for hotel or flights, a good rewards card makes a huge difference and don’t forget about those signup bonuses!!!
Most credit cards give you some kind of signup bonus + an additional bonus when you spend X amount. I’ve found I can hit any bonus I need by simply changing what my primary credit card is for a few months.
Which Credit Card Then?
This is where you usually get the crappy answer, “It depends”, so I’m not going to do that. Because I travel, I grabbed the Delta SkyMiles Reserve with signup bonuses.
Why? Because it comes with a bunch of miles, earns you 2X points on every flight purchase, and, most importantly, it gets you access to the Delta Sky Club lounge! I’ve found the Sky Club lounge to be a key asset for traveling. If I’m alone, I feel secure using their bathrooms and leaving my stuff, and if I’m with family, there’s always comfortable seating, drinks, charging stations, and snacks!
In some airports, you don’t have a Delta Sky Lounge (Las Vegas is missing one), but they usually have a Centurion Lounge, and partner agreements that will get you access as long as your flight was purchased with your rewards card.
Your personal credit card preference might be different. But skipping the miles benefits is a poor choice. Make sure you’ve got a card with some kind of flight agreement.
Once you’ve linked your credit card with your Delta account, you’re good to get miles each month!
Link Instacart with Delta 🛒
You might be shocked to hear this, and that’s great! If you order groceries, you should be getting miles on each dollar you spend! I call this my bananas to points program.
You can get more miles if you’re an Instacart+ member. If you’ve already got Delta status, you can get 3 months to a year of Instacart+ for free. Linking the accounts gets you benefits on both sides!
This is an easy way to get extended benefits for your status. Link the two accounts and forget.
To link them, look at this page:
https://www.instacart.com/delta
Link Uber and Lyft 🚗
Whenever you’re getting a rideshare, even if it’s not to and from the airport, you could be racking up miles and points. What’s the catch? I honestly can’t see a downside. This should be linked immediately, it’s zero cost, and all benefit.
In my opinion, you’re already ordering pizza to eat in the back of your UberXL, you might as well get your Marriot points! And don’t forget you’re always needing a ride to and from the airport. Now, when your family lets you down, you can dry your tears with 2x Lyft miles.
Link Uber & Uber Eats with Marriot 🏩
As of this article, you’re supposed to get:
- 6x points per dollar spent on Uber Eats orders of $25+ that are delivered within the Marriott portfolio
- 3x points per dollar spent on rides with UberXL, Uber Comfort, Uber SUV, and Uber Black
- 2x points per dollar spent on all other Uber Eats orders of $25+, including those from Marriott restaurants
Once linked, these show up like magic!
To link them, use these instructions:
Link Lyft with Delta ✈
This is a simple $1 equals 1 mile hookup, but supposedly, when your destination or origin is from an airport, you get 2x miles per $1.
If you’re a Hilton fan, you can link Link with Hilton Honors, but as previously stated, this is a Detla + Marriot article.
To link them, use this page:
Link Starbucks with Delta 🌟
Call me crazy, but every time you buy an overpriced coffee, you can justify your addiction with beautiful bonus miles. Link your Starbucks dealer app to your Delta SkyMiles account, and watch the Go juice jitter your bonus addiction every day.
In my opinion, this is a no-brainer. If you drink Starbucks, why shouldn’t you link accounts? You might even get a 500 mile linking bonus like I did!
To link them, use this page:
Starbucks Bonus Fact:
If you have to pay for your Starbucks with a business card, you can still get the Starbucks reward stars, by first scanning your “Scan only” barcode.
Link ALL Your OTHER Cards to Marriot — WHY NOT!?
There’s some strange thing the Marriot has called, “Eat Around Town”, which allows you to link ALL of your credit cards, even your non-travel ones, to get Marriot points when you eat at participating restaurants.
The cards do not have to be Marriot or Delta cards.
In my opinion, this isn’t one of those things you need to plan on. I don’t actively go to restaurants listed on “Eat Around Town”, because that’s just not how things work for me, but I do know that sometimes, I eat at some of these places, and now I’m getting Marriot points.
Link them here:
https://eataroundtown.marriott.com/
Love Miles more than Points? Earn Miles from Marriot!?
Wait, what!? So, turn my Marriot points into Delta? Yes!
It’s worth noting: Once you’ve reached a million miles on Delta, you become part of the lifelong club of a Million Miler. That means, even if you completely stopped flying, you’d maintain Silver Medallion status for life. So you could come back after years of zero travel, and STILL have status.
1 Million miles gets you lifetime Silver status. It’s doable. If you’re crazy, here’s the lifetime rewards at each million.
For this reason, I’ve decided to focus all I can on miles, and when I’ve reached a lifetime status, I can choose if I want to continue, or maybe I want to go after getting lifetime Marriot status next?
The Marriot lifetime status is more achievable, but doesn’t base it’s system on the points. You’d have to earn this without tricks. So I make my points work for me as miles so I can get the maximum benefit.
Regardless, if you want to focus your travels on one lifetime benefit, you can do so by automatically converting you Marriot points to miles!
You can have this setup to happen automatically with each hotel stay by going to your Profile > Earning Preferences > Miles. Of course, if you’ve signed up for all the linked accounts, you’ll still be adding Marriot points to your account. You can convert those later. It’s nice to have all your points in one bucket, if you’re trying to keep everything simple like me.
To Convert Points Later: https://www.marriott.com/loyalty/redeem/travel/points-to-miles.mi
If you’re converting later, I’ve heard you should wait for your Marriot points to hit 60k, and you’ll usually get a small bonus for your conversion.
That’s All Folks!
I can’t believe no one told me about all these benefits before! I was losing so many miles and points! Now I know, so I had to write this article to share the love 💖. Please share this article with anyone you have who’s started traveling or looking into traveling.
With these little tricks, your travel can get you lounges, short SkyPriority Lines, and miles of miles!
One loyalty program to rule them all
One blog to find them
One account to bring them all, and in the backend, bind themIn the land of barter, where the points lie
Did I miss anything? Comment and let me know!
