  Direct marketers use target models in order to minimize the spreading loss of
sales efforts. The application of target models has become more widespread with
the increasing range of sales efforts. Target models are relevant for offline
marketers sending printed mails as well as for online marketers who have to
avoid intensity. However business has retained its evaluation since the late
1960s. Marketing decision-makers still prefer managerial performance measures
of the economic benefit of a target model. Such benefit measures have merits
but are unfavorable in other respects: They constrain leadership by stretched
targets since they do not tell us how good a model could be. And they require a
predisposed decision regarding cut-offs. Since this is based on earlier
optimizations it virtually means sticking to traditions. Hence it is
recommended also to use cut-off invariant and potential oriented performance
measures for the model evaluation. This has three advantages: sustaining
stretched targets, identifying improvement potential and sup-porting an
automated evaluation of many different models. This article introduces a
concrete po-tential measure and shows how to calculate it. It is especially
recommended for direct marketing businesses churning out many specific target
models at short intervals.
