Predictive Analytics Guide

Predictive analytics is business intelligence technology that produces a predictive score for each customer or other organizational element. Assigning these predictive scores is the job of a predictive model which has, in turn, been trained over your data, learning from the experience of your organization.

Predictive analytics optimizes marketing campaigns and website behavior to increase customer responses, conversions and clicks, and to decrease churn. Each customer's predictive score informs actions to be taken with that customer — business intelligence just doesn't get more actionable than that.

What's the best way to learn about predictive analytics? There's no better way to learn than from concrete case studies such as those presented by Fortune 500 analytics competitors and other top practitioners at the next Predictive Analytics World. In the meanwhile, start by taking a look through the resources listed below on this page.

Book

Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die. Read this rich, entertaining primer by former Columbia University professor and Predictive Analytics World founder Eric Siegel, which reveals the power and perils of predictive analytics, showing how predicting human behavior combats financial risk, fortifies healthcare, conquers spam, toughens crime-fighting and boosts sales. More info, excerpts, reviews, and press.

Tutorial Articles

The following short, published articles, written by the conference chair, are a great place to get started.

• Predictive Analytics with Data Mining: How It Works
  Get a handle on the functional value of predictive analytics for marketing, sales and product direction. DM Review's DM Direct

• Seven Reasons You Need Predictive Analytics Today
  Predictive analytics has come of age as a core enterprise practice necessary to sustain competitive advantage. This definitive white paper, sponsored by IBM, reveals seven strategic objectives that can be attained to their full potential only by employing predictive analytics, namely Compete, Grow, Enforce, Improve, Satisfy, Learn, and Act.

• Driven with Business Expertise, Analytics Produces Actionable Predictions
  Run data mining as a business activity to generate customer predictions that will have a business impact. CRM Magazine's DestinationCRM.

• Six Ways to Lower Costs with Predictive Analytics
  This article delivers six ways predictive analytics lowers costs without decreasing business, thus transforming your enterprise into a Lean, Mean Analytical Machine. Example brand-name case study results are provided along the way. From BeyeNETWORK.

• Numerous interviews with and writings by Eric Siegel, founder of Predictive Analytics World and author of Predictive Analytics

• Predictive Analytics Delivers Value Across Business Applications

• Predictive Analytics' Killer App: Retaining New Customers

Advanced Topics

• Uplift Modeling: Predictive Analytics Can’t Optimize Marketing Decisions Without It
  To drive business decisions for maximal impact, analytical models must predict the marketing influence of each decision on customer buying behavior. Uplift modeling provides the means to do this, improving upon conventional response and churn models that introduce significant risk by optimizing for the wrong thing. This shift is fundamental to empirically driven decision making. This convention-altering white paper, reveals the why and how, and delivers case study results that multiply the ROI of predictive analytics by factors up to 11.
  
  

• Free book chapter: The Seven Practice Areas of Text Analytics
  Presently, text mining is in a loosely organized set of competing technologies with no clear dominance among them. This book chapter organizes text analytics methods as seven complementary practice areas, showing how to select amongst them for your objectives.

Predictive Analytics Training

For more extensive learning, attend Predictive Analytics World's official training seminar or view the online e-course on predictive analytics, available on-demand at any time. Training participants earn a hefty discount off Predictive Analytics World registration, amounting to up to half off the training.

Predictive Analytics World Conference

Predictive Analytics World is the leading event for predictive analytics consumers, managers and commercial practitioners. This conference delivers case studies, expertise and resources over a range of business applications of predictive analytics. For more on this conference's scope, see About Predictive Analytics World.

Predictive Analytics World for Government is the predictive analytics conference for the government, designed to help agency managers understand how they can apply predictive analytics to more effectively and efficiently accomplish their mission. For more on this conference's scope, see About Predictive Analytics World for Government.

Text Analytics World Conference

Text Analytics World is the business event for text analytics consumers, managers and commercial practitioners. This conference delivers case studies, expertise and resources over a range of business applications of text analytics. For more on this conference's scope, see About Text Analytics World.

Predictive Analytics Newsletters

Subscribe to the Predictive Analytics Times newsletter: Case studies, articles, events. Or view previous newsletters.

www.KDnuggets.com: A comprehensive online portal and newsletter for data mining, including predictive analytics.

Subscribe to Predictive Analytics World event notifications and announcements.

Webcasts – Archived and On-Demand

View informative webcasts on-demand now, at no charge.

Survey Results on Predictive Analytics

Business applications: Predictive Analytics World Survey on Business Applications (PDF file). Commercial deployments, trends, verticals, and the ROI's achieved.

Analytical practitioners: Rexer Analytics Data Miner Survey. An extensive survey of data mining and predictive analytics professionals, reporting data miner needs, preferences and views, and the most popular software tools.

Predictive Analytics Informative Interview

View succinct responses from Predictive Analytics World founder Eric Siegel that provide an overview of predictive analytics. Answers to the following questions are provided:

• Why is predictive analytics important?
• Isn't prediction impossible?
• Is predictive analytics a big data thing?
• Did Nate Silver use predictive analytics to forecast Obama's elections?
• Does predictive analytics invade privacy?
• What are the hottest trends in predictive analytics?
• What is the coolest thing predictive analytics has done?

FAQ: Predictive Analytics World

• How is predictive analytics different from forecasting?
• Who is Predictive Analytics World for?
• What will I learn at Predictive Analytics World?
• Is Predictive Analtyics World a “data mining” conference?
• More questions…