About Affinity Lists

Note

• Before you can work with affinity lists, your system administrator must build a Prediction model for you.

You use the Affinity Lists module in Commerce Server Business Desk to create user affinity lists from prediction models, and then export the lists into List Manager. After the list is in List Manager, you can use it for a targeted campaign like direct mail or to set user profile properties for targeted advertising.

Using Commerce Server 2002, your System Administrator can create the following model configurations:

• Transactions. Use to build analysis models that predict the products that users are likely to buy. For example, your site could present each user with a list of personalized product recommendations.
• Demographics. Use to build analysis models that predict the demographic characteristics that your users are likely to share. For example, you can use the demographic analysis models to improve your understanding of the registered users who visit your site.
• Combined Transactions and Demographics. Use to build analysis models that predict likely relationships between demographic characteristics and product purchases. The accuracy of this model is directly proportional to the number of registered users on your Web site.
• Product Browsing. Use to build analysis models that predict the products that your users are likely to browse. For example, you can place links on your site that are relevant to your users.
• Ad Click. Use to build analysis models that predict the ads that your users are likely to click.

Prediction models describe the predicted future behavior of users based on similar users whose information is stored in the Data Warehouse. Your site administrator builds these models in Commerce Server Manager.

After these models have been built, you use them to predict which of your registered users might be interested in a certain product based on their properties (for example, products they purchased on your site, their demographic information, or the pages they have browsed on your site). You then use the Affinity Lists module to create a list of users to whom you can target a direct mail campaign.

See Also

Workflow for Affinity Lists

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