Use these frameworks to stay focused on the consumer and use cases.
The consumer journey in the digital age is more dispersed than ever. This increases the difficulty for marketers in determining the identities of their clients. However, if marketers concentrate on use cases and put the consumer first, there is still hope.
“It’s crucial to consider your customers’ viewpoint and prioritize use cases over identity,” stated Greg Krehbiel, a consultant at The Krehbiel Group, during the Talking tech Conference.
According to Krehbiel, “resolving identity can impede your use cases and create a negative customer experience.”
Here are two frameworks that prioritize use cases when addressing identity resolution.
Framework for devices
Krehbiel stated, “Everyone believes that people visit their websites, but that’s really not the case.” “Actually, a device is requesting something from your website.”
Yes, that device is being used by a human. But use a framework that begins with the device to identify who it is.
profile of the device. There is a device identification on the device your consumer is using. This information may be sufficient to guide a straightforward call to action that advances the client journey. The customer might be asked to download an app, for example, if the device is a phone.
Action. Marketers have the ability to advance customers around your website or other digital touchpoint and learn more about them based on the activities they take part in. What sort of links are they making? For instance, you could ask every reader of an article to respond to a poll about the subject.
Identifiers. Here, clients will provide your company with their phone number, email address, or other identifying information in order to
These IDs are frequently associated with anonymous actions. However, not every match is ideal, and marketers may feel more comfortable with certain matches than others.
Marketers may, for example, include links in emails that recipients click on. Every email has a record ID at the email service provider (ESP). The record ID from the ESP can be obtained by your website when the client clicks on the link, and it can then be added to the web profile along with the other activities the customer has taken on your website. In this instance, the anonymous website visitor is now connected to an email, giving them additional insight about your business.
This matching isn’t perfect because the link from the email might have been forwarded to others or shared in a social media post, which would result in activity from someone other than the recipient of the email.
Individual. Marketers can get more confident in their client engagement strategies when more identifiers are linked, as they have reduced the customer base to a single individual or buyer. They have the option of using deterministic matching, which links profiles only when they have a shared identifier. Alternatively, they can utilize probabilistic matching, which links profiles that have a high likelihood of being linked to one another (based on behavior and other data) using AI. This method does not require the “smoking gun” of a shared phone number or email address to link the several profiles together.
“You can be a little more confident and cross-promote newsletters, talk about renewals and account information and that kind of thing once you’ve resolved things down to a person,” the source stated.
Individual structure
Resolving identity issues from use cases that start at the device level is a useful tactic for improving consumer understanding. However, implementing a person-first framework is an alternative.
“You often miss the big picture when you only look at what you can measure,” Krehbiel remarked. “An alternative way to conceptualize these ideas is to compare the person framework to the creative right side of the brain and the device framework to the measurement left side.”
individual first. Start by seeing your consumer as an individual who is free of digital burdens. Depending on the platform or channel they’re using, people online frequently only share a portion of who they are. For example, someone might use one email or social media account for business matters and a different account to communicate with friends and family. Many people prefer to compartmentalize, despite the fact that social media sites like Facebook encourage users to disclose their complete self by prohibiting them from having numerous profiles.
gadget. Prioritize the individual and then consider all the strategies they use to get past paywalls and steer clear of data sharing when interacting online.
In order to come up with a list of potential actions, Krehbiel said, “you have to look at it from a personal profile first to think what they might do.” “After that, you look at the device profile and ask yourself, ‘How can I devise a strategy to stop this from happening?'”
Identifiers. Certain types of digital fingerprinting, depending on the device, can assist marketers in recognizing a recurring customer, even if that customer is using Incognito Mode on their browser.
Anticipating how the client is splitting their online presence is more crucial than apprehending cheats.
For example, in a business-to-business use case, a client probably possesses both a personal and a business email address. It is preferable not to consolidate these accounts in light of this consumer preference. Transmitting a professional email to a personal account diminishes rather than enhances the client experience.
Personas. Continue to elaborate on the customer’s demands and behaviors in light of each unique device and identifier. If a customer has many business emails, one of them might be related to a paid job, while the other might be related to a side project or other employment.
Make sure you contact clients in a method that best suits their needs to maintain a satisfied customer base.
Krehbiel advised “thinking through your use cases through the device framework and through the person framework” as one works to resolve identity, integrate records, and produce a single customer record. To provide a positive customer experience, “determine the optimal data structure, merging strategy, and other actions that will be consistent with your business objectives and what your customers want.”