The digital customer journey is more fragmented than ever. This makes resolving the identities of shoppers a good greater challenge for marketers. But all hope isn’t lost if marketers give attention to use cases and think concerning the customer first.
“Use cases are more necessary than identity, and it’s good to take into consideration things out of your customer’s perspective,” said Greg Krehbiel, consultant for The Krehbiel Group, at The MarTech Conference.
“Resolving identity can get in the best way of your use cases and it might probably create a foul customer experience,” Krehbiel said.
Here are two frameworks for approaching identity resolution that keep use cases top-of-mind.
Device framework
“Everybody thinks that folks visit their web sites, but that’s really not the case,” said Krehbiel. “It’s actually a tool that’s making a request to your website.”
Yes, there’s a one who’s using that device. But with a view to determine who it’s, adopt a framework that starts with the device.
Device profile. The device your customer is using has a tool identifier. This might be enough data to tell a basic call-to-action to maneuver the customer journey forward. For instance, if the device is a phone, the subsequent motion may very well be to have the customer download an app.
Activity. Marketers may also move customers along and discover more about them based on the form of activity they engage in together with your website or digital touchpoint. What form of content are they clicking on? You can, for example, invite all of the readers of an article to fill out a survey that pertains to the subject.
Identifiers. This is where customers will share a phone number, email or other type of identification together with your organization to receive more information, make a purchase order or take other actions.
In many cases, these identifiers might be linked with anonymous actions. But this matching isn’t perfect — marketers might be more confident with some matches than others.
For instance, a marketer can include links in an email that the receiver clicks on. In the e-mail service provider (ESP), each email has a record ID. When that customer clicks on the link, your website can capture the record ID from the ESP and add it to the online profile that features other actions the customer took in your site. In this case, now the anonymous visitor to your website is linked to an email, adding one other dimension to the customer.
This matching isn’t perfect since the link from the e-mail might need been forwarded to others or shared in a social media post, which might end in activity from someone aside from the recipient of the e-mail.
Person. As more identifiers are linked, marketers can gain confidence within the ways they engage the customer because they’ve resolved the customer to a single person or buyer. They can use deterministic matching, which implies they only link profiles once they share a typical identifier. Or they’ll use probabilistic matching, which uses AI to link profiles that show a high probability that they’re the identical person (based on behavior and other data), without the “smoking gun” of a typical email or phone number that connects the multiple profiles.
“Once you’ve resolved things all the way down to an individual, that’s when you’ll be able to be slightly more confident and you’ll be able to cross-promote newsletters, you’ll be able to discuss renewals and account information and that form of thing,” said Krehbiel.
Dig deeper: Big Lots’ approach to constructing an identity roadmap
Person framework
Resolving identities from use cases that begin on the device level is an efficient strategy for attending to know your customer higher. But there’s one other way — adopting a person-first framework.
“Looking just at what you’ll be able to measure, you often miss the massive picture,” Krehbiel said. “Another strategy to take into consideration these items is that the device framework is form of just like the measurement left brain side of things, and the person framework is form of like the correct brain creative side of things.”
Person-first. Begin with an idea of your customer as an individual without the digital baggage. People online often share just a component of who they’re based on the platform or channel they’re using. For instance, an individual might use an expert social media account or email for business things, and one other account for reaching friends and family. Even though platforms like Facebook encourage people to share their entire personality by stopping them from using multiple accounts, many individuals prefer to compartmentalize.
Device. Think of the person first, then consider all of the ways they struggle to get around paywalls and avoid sharing data once they engage online.
“You have to take a look at it from a private profile first to think what they may do and provide you with an inventory of things that the person is likely to be doing,” Krehbiel explained. “And then you definately go over to the device profile and you’re thinking that, ‘How can I provide you with a plan that can prevent this from happening?’”
Identifiers. Depending on the device, there are types of digital fingerprinting that can assist marketers discover a returning user, even when that user is using Incognito Mode on their browser.
What’s more necessary than catching cheaters, nonetheless, is envisioning how the customer is dividing their online presence.
For instance, in a B2B use case, a customer likely has each an expert email address and a private one. Keeping this customer preference in mind, it’s best to not merge these accounts. Sending a business email to a private account detracts from the customer experience as a substitute of improving it.
Personas. Continue to flesh out the activities and needs of the customer in keeping with each distinct device and identifier. If your customer has multiple business emails, one email is likely to be for a salaried position, and the opposite may very well be for a unique profession or “side hustle.”
Keep customers pleased by finding the correct strategy to contact them in keeping with their needs.
“As you’re employed through attempting to resolve identity, attempting to merge records, attempting to create that single customer record, consider your use cases through the device framework and through the person framework,” said Krehbiel. “Figure out what’s one of the best data structure and what’s one of the best merging strategy and other things which you could try this might be consistent with your online business objectives, but in addition with what your customer wants, to make a very good customer experience.”
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