By: Eric Siegel, Founder, Predictive Analytics World
In anticipation of her upcoming conference presentation, Predictive Analytics for Different Business Types: Optimize All the Funnels, at Predictive Analytics World New York, 
October 23-27, 2016, we asked Meina Zhou, Data Scientist at Bitly, a few questions about her work in predictive analytics.
Q: In your work with predictive analytics, what behavior or outcome do your models predict?
A: My marketing qualified lead scoring model helps to identify high-quality leads. My churn prediction model helps to identify the current customers that have the highest probability to churn. My upsell prediction model helps to identify the best customers to upsell.
Q: How does predictive analytics deliver value at your organization – what is one specific way in which it actively drives decisions or operations?
A: My predictive analytics helps the customer success team to better understand our customers’ behaviors and to identify key factors churning. It also helps the customer success team to design proactive retention actions accordingly.
Q: Can you describe a quantitative result, such as the predictive lift of your model or the ROI of an analytics initiative?
A: The marketing team compared my model with third-party software and determined that my model was on par. Building the software in-house would allow us to save the money we would have spent on a third-party tool.
Q: What surprising discovery or insight have you unearthed in your data?
A: Some of the customers churned because they never understood how our product worked. They decided to pay for the product before they knew how to use it.
Q: Sneak preview: Please tell us a take-away that you will provide during your talk at Predictive Analytics World.
A: Utilize the usage data of your product to understand the customers’ engagement with your product. The change in the customers’ usage behavior can be key factors for churning and upselling.
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Don't miss Meina’s conference presentation, Predictive Analytics for Different Business Types: Optimize All the Funnels, at Predictive Analytics World New York on Wednesday, October 26, 2016 from 11:15 to 11:35 am. Click here to register for attendance.
By: Eric Siegel, Founder, Predictive Analytics World