Jim answers questions from fellow Drillers (More questions with answers here , Work Overview here , Index of concepts here ) Topic Overview Hi again folks, Jim Novo here. Subsidy costs . You’re just starting to hear people talk about these ideas in online marketing, but they’ve been around for years offline in direct marketing. The basic idea is this: sending a discount to someone who is very highly likely to make a purchase without the discount is a waste of margin dollars best spent elsewhere. And you can measure this effect quite easily using Control Groups , another concept starting to get some recognition with online marketers. Discussing / implementing these topics can be a bit difficult, though the Finance people will get it immediately and love it if you go in this direction. A plus for fellow Drillers out there is you can start to see some of these ideas in action BEFORE you start going deep using the RFM & Lifecycle data we’ve been talking about and using for years.…