A relatively simple predictive market targeting approach can be applied to your email lists to identify your best prospects and increase their response rates. Let's say the open rate for your last campaign was 15%. The underlying reality is that this is an average comprised of higher-performing segments (i.e., 17% and 19%) and lower-performing segments (i.e., 11% and 13%). The higher-performing segments ideally represent your best prospects—those more interested in your offer, more likely to buy and more likely to buy at higher deal sizes. Three predictive marketing best practices—market definition, market segmentation and market testing—are needed to focus your campaigns on higher performing segments. First, accurately define your market by identifying the largest, most tightly defined target possible. You want to create the definition in a way that prioritizes your ideal prospects for focus. Second, segment your database or list into “cubes” of like companies based on variables such as revenue, number of employees and SIC codes. Third, test the discrete segments and analyze the results to see which segments generate the highest response rates. Information gathered from this process can also be used to refine offers to target segments. For example, after testing and identifying your top-tier segment, did you find that the response rate was higher for a second- or third-tier segment? You've discovered new opportunity there, and you may also now know there is additional work needed to fine-tune your offer to your top prospect tier. Benefits directly tied to this approach include higher return on marketing investment and more effective use of resources, budgets and time. And companies applying predictive targeting see better-developed pipelines, as well as increased sales performance. Dan McDade is president-CEO of PointClear (www.pointclear.com), a prospect-development company.