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New SPSS predictive analytic application helps marketers optimize campaigns across multiple channels, to achieve 25 to 50% more revenue
Source: www.spss.com
Copyright SPSS, Inc. 2004
05/24/04

This is a dated announcement. The material in this announcement could be superceded by more current announcements.

PredictiveMarketing™ 2.0 features newly acquired DataDistilleries technology

CHICAGO, 04/26/04 — Placing the power of predictive analytics right into the hands of marketers, SPSS Inc. (NASDAQ: SPSSE) announced today the launch of PredictiveMarketing™ 2.0, an application for campaign optimization and execution. PredictiveMarketing 2.0 is the first SPSS release featuring predictive analytic application technology from DataDistilleries, a Netherlands-based company SPSS acquired last November.

PredictiveMarketing 2.0 uses advanced techniques to increase the profitability of campaigns. The application helps marketers determine to whom to send offers, which offers to send, when to send them and which channels to use. New to this release is cross-campaign optimization, the ability to enhance customer targeting across multiple campaigns. Unlike traditional marketing campaign approaches, which focus on choosing the best customers for each campaign, PredictiveMarketing 2.0 optimizes across the entire set of campaigns, and selects the best one for each customer. This customer-focused approach can result in 25 to 50 percent increases in campaign revenue.

“Predictive analytics carries a significant potential for mainstream business processes, such as marketing and sales,” said Henry Morris, group vice president for Applications and Information Intelligence at IDC, a global market intelligence and advisory firm in information technology and the telecommunications industry. “The most important factor that will determine the success of predictive analytics is the ability for business users to deploy these analytics in their day-to-day-activities and incorporate the results directly into the actions they are taking. Companies should look for vendors offering applications that combine the strength of predictive analytics with ease of use for business users.”

FBTO, a Netherlands-based insurance company and part of the Achmea Group, recently upgraded to PredictiveMarketing 2.0 to optimize its outbound marketing campaigns. FBTO uses multiple direct channels -- direct mail, call center and the Web -- to market its insurance products.

“PredictiveMarketing 2.0 enables our marketers to predict the effectiveness of campaigns and increase the efficiency of our entire campaign management process,” said Jeroen Pronk, database marketing manager at FBTO. “With the previous version of PredictiveMarketing, we reduced campaign volumes by 40 percent and at the same time doubled the response. PredictiveMarketing 2.0 enables us to gain even more value from our campaigns. The first campaigns we optimized with the new software already generated 29 percent more profit at the same cost as previous campaigns. The application automatically evaluates all potential offers for each customer and selects the most profitable one. This improved process is a crucial step forward in FBTO’s strategy to achieve a centralized orchestration of multi-channel customer contacts.”

Cross-Campaign Optimization
Combining predictive analytics and advanced business logic, PredictiveMarketing 2.0 enables marketers to anticipate how individual customers will respond to specific campaigns and channels, and calculates which campaigns will provide the greatest revenue. During campaign creation, users can perform what-if analyses by adding business rules, such as specific sales targets or budget restrictions, to immediately see the impact on campaign expenses and revenues.

Cross-Channel Optimization
PredictiveMarketing 2.0 generates campaigns for all outbound channels, such as direct mail, e-mail and the call center, using predictive analytics to select the best channel for each customer, from both a customer and cost point of view. The application will automatically select backup channels when the capacity of a channel is exceeded, to ensure completion of the campaign.

Enforcement of Customer Contact Restrictions
PredictiveMarketing enforces internal contact restrictions and interaction policies such as federal and state “do-not-call” lists, ensuring that customers are not over contacted or contacted through restricted channels. These restrictions are enforced across all campaigns and channels.

Event-Driven Campaigns
The application monitors individual customer behavior to identify changes or “events” that indicate an unmet need or potential loss of value, and then selects the best campaign for each particular situation. As a result, customers receive timely offers that address their actual needs.

Seamless Integration
As a complement to an existing campaign management system, PredictiveMarketing enables marketers to improve their campaign results. While the application can support every step of the campaign management process, PredictiveMarketing seamlessly integrates with existing campaign management systems and processes, as well as existing marketing databases or data warehouses.

“Marketers have often had to rely on a hit-or-miss approach to campaign management, meaning offers are often targeted too broadly, while the manual approach to customer selection makes executing multiple campaigns complex, time-consuming and hard to get right,” said Marcel Holsheimer, vice president of vertical product marketing at SPSS and founder of DataDistilleries. “PredictiveMarketing 2.0 adds an automated precision to customer contact that improves individual campaign effectiveness and scales to large customer bases and complex, multi-campaign operations. The application allows marketers to leverage their business knowledge and expertise, but it takes the guesswork and risk out of marketing campaigns, enabling greater efficiency, effectiveness and profitability.”