A Customer Data Platform (CDP) includes Identity resolution capability, leveraged by marketers to resolve customer identities across multiple channels, systems and devices. It enables marketers to gain comprehensive customer visibility by monitoring their activities across online and offline channels. Through this, they can identify visitors when they are online and perform activities like browsing, searching etc. across touchpoints. Marketers can deliver real time tailored content based on customer’s intent, purchase behavior or preferences once they attain identity resolution. For instance, if brands can gain holistic customer visibility, it helps them to find out the specific product or services every customer is searching. Consequently, it helps firms to target individuals through desired channels with messages or offers, tailored to their needs—this kind of digital programs aids in enhancing online conversion and building customer loyalty.
Let us understand Identity Resolution through following cases
1) In the first case, the visitor logs in to the ecommerce website through the desktop to purchase products.
2) In the second case, the same visitor revisits the same ecommerce website through the desktop to purchase products but without any login.
3) In the third cases, the same visitor anonymously visits the same ecommerce website but through the smartphone this time and without any login.
In the first case where the customer was logged into the website, customer credentials are easy to identify. In the second case, there is a possibility that the website might recognize the visitor if he/she had earlier visited the website with same cookie ID, and the individual has not erased the browser’s cookies. If the cookie ID from the previous visit matches with the present visit, the website can accurately identify the visitor. But if the visitor browsed from the different browser, then the website may not be able to figure out the identity. The last case depicts that the user is anonymous and has visited the website through smartphones. Hence, the user remains unidentified. From the above cases, we can understand, that identity resolution capability can be acquired only when the platform can efficiently resolve identities and arrive at an outcome that the visitor in all the three cases is the same.
To address the identity resolution ambiguity marketers are searching for the correct martech tool. Over recent years, martech like Customer Data Platform is gaining traction in various industries. A customer data platform is a unified platform of customer data which can be collated, seen and permitted by other systems. In other words, bring all the customer details and bind the data together into a unified customer profile. Such profiles are created for every known and unknown visitor including details such as purchases, browsing history, email interactions, attributes, subscriptions, loyalty membership and status, interests and preferences, browser type, location, demographics, predictive scores and more. Further, several identifying data elements such as cookies, email address, full name, physical address, phone number, system ID, etc. are also synchronized in the profile.
CDP helps resolve identities by both deterministic and probabilistic matching. Deterministic matching inspects customers first-party data and matches customer information using attributes like username, phone number, email id, etc. In contrast, probabilistic matching makes use of customer identifiers such as device type, browser type, IP address, etc. when first party data is confined. Thus, CDP is an efficient tool to resolve customer identities and deliver 1:1 engagement with individualized marketing campaigns.
