The effectiveness of a brand’s marketing strategy is increasingly linked to the ability to create personalized and valuable customer experiences: data released by McKinsey, show how personalization of the customer experience can affect the reduction of acquisition costs by up to 50 percent, increase revenues by 5 to 15 percent, and improve the effectiveness of marketing investments by 10 to 30 percent.
In an increasingly connected and customer-centric environment, data about users and customers thus become the real treasure, an asset that, unfortunately, at the strategic level often remains unexpressed.More than 60% of marketers, according to research published by IAB, say, in fact, that the biggest challenge lies precisely in connecting the different user touchpoints by creating for each customer views holistic and relevant.
Identity resolution enables just that! Let’s find out what it is, how it works and how it can be the key to the success of your marketing campaigns.
Identity resolution: let’s start with the definition
Gartner defines identity resolution as “the discipline of recognizing people across channels and devices, and associating them with information used for marketing and advertising. It uses a constellation of tools, techniques and data.” The expression “identity resolution” thus goes to define the ability to know, but more importantly, recognize each individual user and customer, in real time, thanks to the convergence and “resolution” of the different IDs attributed during different interactions across channels and touchpoints.
Tools, techniques, data: identity resolution works on an identification and tracking process that goes beyond third-party cookies and takes zero-party data into account, first-party data, mobile advertising ID (MAID), which is the identifier provided by a mobile device’s operating system, and universal ID, which are cross-platform tracking systems fielded precisely by identity resolution platforms.
While the concept appears very simple and intuitive in words, its scope certainly cannot be considered so.
Data and information are released at multiple touchpoints, throughout the entire customer journey: until now, the main technological solutions on the market in martech and adtech, allowed only a separate management of such information, especially if they were anonymous and persistent identifiers. Identity resolution has, in fact, allowed the overcoming of this division with a view to the creation of a real single customer view, preserving privacy!
Resolution, enrichment, activation: the three phases of an identity resolution process
As partly anticipated, the identity resolution process, begins with the first-party data that,
once collected, are shared in a single environment.
This is where it comes into play, the identity graph, a kind of large database that collects all the identifiers matched to different customer profiles: many small fragments (name, device id, purchases, hashed email, cookies…) that connected together, with varying degrees of certainty, build precisely the identity of the individual user.
In fact, a deterministic or probabilistic approach can be taken when solving the identity.
In the former case, mainly first-party data come into play in deterministic matching, while, in the latter case, predictive algorithms also use additional signals in addition to first-party data, such as, for example, actions originating from the same IP, network or Wi-Fi.
But identity resolution is but the first step: data and information about the user are constantly enriched, giving rise to a virtuous process of qualifying one’s audience, also thanks to the contribution of data from media outside the company’s properties.
From resolution to enrichment to activation: you can preside over and orchestrate your user’s customer journey from first impression to post-purchase, creating increasingly relevant and effective ADS campaigns even on new users (audience extension) and personalizing the customer experience at every touchpoint, from website to point of sale.
Identity resolution: maximize the value of data!
As can be easily guessed, the revolution related to identity resolution generates a myriad of opportunities for brands not to be missed to create truly omnichannel customer experiences, even outside corporate properties.
- In-depth knowledge of one’s audience also thanks to data on anonymous users, which reconciles with that of known users, allowing even deeper audience insights and even more complete user profiles.
- Even more consistent and valuable customer experiences Knowing your users thoroughly is the first step in creating personalized and valuable customer experiences. The more data collected and normalized at the single customer view level, the more up-to-date and complete the user profile will be and the more effective personalization activities will be.
- Marketing activities and ADS campaigns, truly omnichannel More effective profiling and segmentation of your audience allows you to create highly profiled messages and communications, reaching your users at the most appropriate time and through the most appropriate channel.
- Privacy First! Identity resolution allows data on users to be managed in full compliance with privacy and current regulations on the processing of personal data.
