MSGI and Thinking Machines Partner for Data Mining
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Thinking Machines, a leading provider of prediction-based loyalty systems, and MSGI, a marketing and information services industry leader, have announced a strategic partnership that will deliver sophisticated data mining and warehousing solutions to MSGI's more than 800 clients in North America.

The agreement provides a channel of distribution in the direct marketing industry for Thinking Machines' Darwin data mining software. By providing a deeper view of patterns, trends and correlations in their data, Darwin will help MSGI's clients to understand more precisely what they need to do to attract and maintain customers. Although Darwin is currently used by the telecommunications and financial services industries, this partnership with MSGI is expected to leverage Darwin's powerful data mining capabilities more than ever before.

"Companies are allocating more dollars to direct marketing every year, and any factor that can save them time, money and effort offers an enormous competitive advantage," said Robert L. Doretti, CEO and president of Thinking Machines. "Darwin will help MSGI clients win by allowing them to more accurately make the right offer at the right time. In other words, MSGI's clients can now truly achieve `just-in-time' marketing."

MSGI's clients will benefit greatly from access to this new technology by allowing them to predict, with much greater precision, not only which prospects are likely to respond to offers for credit cards, home equity lines of credit, magazine subscriptions, theater tickets and many other products and services, but when they are likely to respond.

"The objective in direct marketing is to mail the fewest pieces possible while still achieving significant results. The best way to make a dramatic impact on your response percentage is to accurately target those most likely to purchase based on pattern recognition using a series of internal and external variables," noted Jeremy Barbera, chairman and CEO of MSGI. "The deeper you can get into the relationships within a given database, the higher the likelihood is that you can predict who will buy, what product, and when. Darwin can mine our databases and provide information that can help us design and deploy even stronger marketing strategies for our clients. "

MSGI provides database marketing, custom telemarketing and telefundraising services, and online consulting and Web design to more than 800 commercial and not-for-profit clients in the United States and Canada. The company operates through its wholly-owned subsidiaries SD&A, Metro Direct and Pegasus Internet.

Thinking Machines provides complete prediction-based loyalty management solutions for organizations with large databases in the financial services, telecommunications and database marketing industries. Thinking Machines' solutions help companies increase profitability with highly accurate understanding and prediction of customer behavior.