The paper concludes with a detailed description of the information that can be learned from transaction history, and shows how its use produces profits far greater than could be produced by use of a model. Many companies are using models successfully to improve their response rates and profits in marketing to outside prospect lists. For example, if you are selling encyclopedias through the mail, you may rent a list of parents of high school students. If your mailing is big enough, the profits from using it to direct your mailing could pay for the cost of the model and the appended data. Companies are doing this kind of analysis all the time.
Banks use it to sell credit cards and home equity loans.
Life insurance companies use it to sell life policies, annuities, health insurance and retirement plans. Brokers use it to sell mutual funds. In many situations, such data appending and modeling is a profitable solution to the marketing problem. Where Modeling Does Not Work On the other hand, for most products and services, modeling does not provide sufficient lift to justify the expenses. Thousands of companies have experimented with modeling, and come away dissatisfied, and somewhat poorer.