Have you heard that third-party cookies will soonbe phased out? If so, do you have a plan in place or actionable strategies for how you’ll proceed once that time comes? Nowadays, more and more companies are looking into identity resolution to deliver the same personalized experiences to their customers. If you’re customer-centric, your priority should focus on understanding identity resolution and its purpose in depth. Fortunately, we can help point you in the right direction!

Before diving in too deep, here’s a quick lesson about personalization. In a symposium, it’s common to meet a variety of people, but can you determine how many people you’ll remember afterwards? For most people, it’s likely that they’ll forget the majority of people they met at a symposium unless they have a photogenic memory. However, it’s not out of the norm to remember one person clearly because of a great conversation or a shared interest. 

Here’s one example to think about: You bump into someone you briefly met at a past conference. After noticing that individual, what usually follows is you trying hard remembering their  name. This is a pretty frustrating situation, right? We all have been there though, and there are ways to navigate through this situation if or when it happens again.

Let’s reverse the situation now. How would you feel if that person experiences the same dilemma as you and makes a failed attempt at identifying you by mispronouncing or misspelling your name?

Your customers experience something similar when you don’t get personalization right. It’s important to keep in mind that irrelevant product recommendations and wrong references can negatively  impact your brand’s value and reputation.

Personalized Experiences Really Do Matter

As the world continues to embrace digitization, especially in the B2B landscape, the demand for personalized experiences has significantly grown. Many customers may punish a brand for inaccurate messaging, unsubscribe from communications, and or even pledge to not do business with the brand again.

If you want to avoid a catastrophe like that, learn to leverage Identity Resolution.

How Does Identity Resolution Work?

Based on what you currently understand, how do you think Identity resolution works? It works with the help of identity graphs, and below is a descriptive image that highlights what an identity graph looks like.

An identity graph is a database that keeps customer profiles with all known identifiers within one single place. These identifiers include mobile numbers, account usernames, physical addresses, emails, and cookie-data. These identity graphs align data in order to build profiles that match up with individuals which also includes their behavioral data. If a customer changes a channel or a device, you can still access them based on other attributes. Therefore, losing a customer is out of the question, and it should be avoided at all costs.

How Do You Create Identities and Effectively Utilize Them?

If you’re wondering how to create identities and successfully utilize them, below are a few ways that can help you get started:

• Identify platforms, devices, and channels along your buyer’s journey.
• Map dots between platforms, devices, and channels as a  customer moves along the buyer’s journey
• Match  individuals to each device/platform according to a defined set of identifiers.
• Validate customers, and check if the same user is present across different platforms and devices
• Activate data to synchronize campaigns across different channels, devices, and platforms according to your marketing strategy

Target Your Audience Better By Giving Them a Specific Identity

Furthermore, when you look closely, it’s easier to understand more about your customer’s entire journey, which is nothing but a series of touch points. When used properly, you can utilize  various touch points for targeting purposes and for effective personalization. You can alsonalyze visitors across different websites, which will offer  better insights into both anonymous and interested users. It’s crucial to gather data across multiple touch points, and then weave them together into a unified customer profile. Once this is complete, the next step is to send them relevant messages in order to strike up an engaging conversation.

Interestingly, according to a Salesforce article, it was reported that 76 percent of customers expect brands to consistently understand their needs and then deliver accordingly. With this being said, what can you do to thoroughly understand your customers’ needs and wants? It all comes down to being aware, informed, and connected with your customers. One step that’s definitely worth taking is to create the right identity for your customer(s) that’s devoid of any flaws and inaccuracies. Anteriad is more than willing to offer guidance and insights in this area, so feel free to check out some of our other blogs, or contact us directly!