34 Kellogg Insight version of your product. Your problem, then, is converting them to pay - ing customers. “That’s the point I would attack. I would build a model to predict the conversion and look at variables that drive conversion and what correc - tive actions I can take,” says Sawhney. This might mean, say, developing custom messaging or promotional offers to encourage users to transition to a paid plan—and then testing to see if they work. Or it might mean gauging users’ interest in a new feature in the paid version. Or, in a different scenario, say you are an established software company with deep market penetration—90 percent of the market uses your flag - ship software through subscription. But many of those customers are using it sparingly, or for limited jobs. Those customers may feel that they aren’t getting the full value from the software and may not re-subscribe. This presents you with a customer-retention problem, which you might address by, for instance, developing personalized recommendations for trying out new features or more fully utilizing the software so that your customers can experience more value from it. A Work in Progress Fully transitioning to a “care is the new commerce” mentality will not come easily to most organizations, but that is no reason to delay get - ting started. “These models and tools and processes are actually in production today. This is not science fiction. This is today,” says Sawhney. “So if you are doing marketing and customer engagement the old way—manually and with siloed systems—and assuming that marketing is all about Based on insights from Mohan Sawhney