Managing customer identities across various digital touchpoints is crucial in today’s interconnected marketing landscape. Businesses need to offer a cohesive customer experience across different platforms, whether through apps, websites, or other devices. Achieving this seamless experience requires sophisticated solutions for identity resolution by correlating all the data related to an individual user into a single canonical identifier. The two primary approaches—ID stitching and ID Graphs—present different methods and benefits.
This blog explores these approaches and their roles in enabling cross-domain customer journeys, diving deep into real-world examples, benefits, and challenges to help you decide which approach suits your business best.
The essential in brief:
- ID Stitching vs. ID Graph: ID Graphs provide a more dynamic and accurate way to manage customer identities across domains compared to traditional ID stitching.
- Cross-Domain Benefits: Cross-domain ID Graphs allow businesses to unify customer identities across multiple platforms, enhancing personalisation and cross-selling opportunities.
- Privacy and Compliance: ID Graphs support lawful identity management, respecting user privacy while providing comprehensive insights into customer journeys.
Customer Journeys
To fully appreciate the capabilities of ID stitching and ID Graphs, it is important to understand the different types of customer journeys that businesses aim to support. Customer journeys can either be confined to a single domain or span across multiple domains, each having unique challenges and solutions. Data from multiple data sources can enhance the understanding of these customer journeys, providing valuable insights that drive more effective data modelling and analysis.
Single Domain Multi-Touchpoint Customer Journeys
In a single-domain environment, customer journeys are often limited to interactions within one website or app. A single-domain ID Graph can effectively resolve user identities across these touchpoints, allowing a cohesive and personalised user experience without having to share identity information between different properties. For instance, a retail website can track user interactions from browsing to purchasing within a single domain, providing a consistent customer journey.
This approach is straightforward and effective for companies with a singular online presence, where each user interaction—from searching for products to completing a purchase—happens within the same ecosystem. It simplifies data collection and analysis, but it also means that insights are limited to that one domain.
Cross-Domain Customer Journeys
Cross-domain customer journeys are more complex, linking identities across different domains—such as multiple websites or apps owned by the same company. These journeys are typical for businesses that operate various websites targeting different categories or brands. For example, consider a media company managing different platforms for news, entertainment, and sports. To unify their customers’ interactions across all these touchpoints, an identity graph becomes crucial.
An identity Graph serves as a fundamental tool for identity stitching by presenting a detailed view of data associations. It clarifies connections between distinct identifiers and enables organizations to build a unified customer profile by integrating multiple identifiers across different sources and platforms. For instance, a multicategory retailer might have separate websites for fashion, electronics, and home goods. An identity graph allows them to identify customers across all these touchpoints, analyse their behaviours comprehensively, and offer personalised product recommendations, thus improving customer targeting and opportunities for cross-selling.
ID Stitching or ID Graphs – and Why Does It Matter?
When businesses consider their approach to managing customer identities across multiple digital touchpoints, they often weigh the differences between ID stitching and ID Graphs. Understanding the iterative nature of the identity stitching process is crucial, as it enriches user profiles by linking and mapping different identifiers. Each method offers distinct advantages and has specific challenges.
Identity Stitching
ID stitching is a method of unifying customer data across different interactions to create a single profile. Historically, ID stitching evolved as a third-generation approach to identity resolution:
- Entity Resolution (ER)– This was the first generation, involving the identification and linking of records referring to the same entity across datasets. Challenges with ER included inconsistencies and incomplete data.
- Cookie-Based identity resolution– The second generation tracked user behaviour via cookies. Due to privacy regulations and the depreciation of third-party cookies, this approach has become less effective.
- Profile-Based ID stitching– The third generation, where customer and behavioural data were unified into a single profile, sometimes resulting in what we call “monster profiles”—overloaded and potentially inaccurate due to excess identifiers.
Despite its shortcomings, identity stitching is still a useful approach, especially when considering that identity stitching can help marketers unify the user’s journey across devices and platforms. However, as privacy becomes increasingly important and customers expect transparency, this approach has limitations when used for cross-domain activities.
For example, identity stitching is well-suited for businesses focusing on consolidating data from multiple devices, including mobile apps, used by a single user. It allows different identifiers like cookies, device IDs, and login information to be linked to form a more holistic view. However, this method often struggles with scalability in cross-domain contexts and may require additional offline data matching, which can be cumbersome and imprecise.
Building ID Graphs
The fourth generation, which is ID Graph-based identity resolution, revolutionises the process by managing relationships between persons, devices, and touchpoints. Unlike stitching identifiers together, ID Graphs build on the idea of understanding the relationships between identifiers, resulting in a more coherent and dynamic profile.
ID Graphs work by maintaining relationships between customer identities across various domains and contexts, which allows for a dynamic and accurate representation of a user’s profile over time. With an ID Graph, businesses can adapt to changes—such as a customer switching devices or providing new information—without losing consistency in the profile. This approach simplifies the complexity of integrating customer data, enables lawful processing, and provides actionable insights while addressing the shortcomings of ID stitching.
The choice between ID stitching and ID Graphs depends largely on the use case—whether a business aims to link customer interactions in a relatively straightforward, single-domain environment, or create a more expansive, unified view across multiple domains.
Building a Cross-Domain ID Graph: Key Benefits
The process of building a cross-domain ID Graph is fundamental for businesses aiming to create a comprehensive view of their customer interactions across various digital touchpoints. This type of ID Graph goes beyond simply consolidating data; it enables a deeper understanding of customers by merging multiple identifiers into one unified profile.
A cross-domain ID Graph enables comprehensive customer identity tracking and delivers several key benefits:
- Unified Customer Profiles: By merging identifiers from different domains, companies can create a cohesive and unified view of customer identities across their entire digital presence.
- Improved Personalisation: Sharing identification events across domains helps to deliver highly personalised experiences based on a customer’s complete history.
- Cross-Selling Opportunities: Businesses can leverage ID Graphs to identify opportunities for cross-selling by analysing customer behaviours across different platforms or brands.
- Accurate Analytics: ID Graphs enhance customer analytics by providing a holistic view of customer journeys, enabling data-driven decisions to improve marketing outcomes.
- Reduced Data Fragmentation: By using ID Graphs, data fragmentation is reduced, leading to better data quality and more precise customer insights.
Building a Cross-Domain ID Graph
Building a cross-domain ID Graph is a complex task involving multiple methods and technologies. Below, we look into some of the key approaches that businesses use to build these graphs effectively.
Login and Self Identification with User Identity Information
Login identification is one of the simplest ways to link user profiles across domains. Whenever a user logs into different domains using the same credentials, the profile is merged across these domains, creating a unified user identity. This method is highly reliable since the identifier is explicit and user-driven.
Self-identification also plays a role. For instance, when users subscribe to newsletters or fill out forms with consistent identifiers, this information can be used to merge or reference their profiles across domains. This type of identification leverages primary identifiers like email addresses or phone numbers, which remain consistent across multiple touchpoints.
Click Identification
Click identification enables identity linkage when users click through links from one domain to another. For example, clicking a link in an email from domain A that leads to domain B allows both profiles to be merged. This method helps consolidate profiles from interactions that span multiple channels.
In addition to email, cross-device click identification is also crucial. For instance, when a user clicks from a mobile app to a website, that click event can be used to merge their profiles across the domains, thereby helping businesses build a more complete view of the user journey.
Cross-Domain Identification
Through cross-domain identification, users can be recognised across multiple websites with different domains. A visitor can be automatically redirected to another domain to create a multi-domain profile. Strategies for identifying the next best domain can be implemented based on the likelihood of which domains are often visited by the same users. The effect is that once a visitor is identified as a customer on one domain, this identification can be used for all associated domains. A user that is still "anonymous" can be recognised as the same user across all associated domains.
Network and UTIQ Integration with Identity Provider
UTIQ integration further strengthens cross-domain identification. By leveraging network signals, it becomes possible to link users across different domains without relying on cookies or intrusive fingerprinting methods, increasing privacy compliance. This is especially relevant for telecommunications companies, which can use network identification to link customer profiles across devices within the same mobile network.
UTIQ’s martechpass allows businesses to tap into network-level identifiers, creating a privacy-compliant way to link users across domains and devices without violating GDPR regulations. This significantly increases the ability to accurately track customers while respecting their privacy preferences.
Implementing Cross-Domain Identity Management
Successfully implementing a cross-domain ID Graph requires more than just understanding the technologies; it demands careful planning, the right tools, and a strong focus on privacy and ongoing optimisation.
Defining the use case
Imagine a retailer operating three different websites: groceries.com for groceries, homeappliances.com for home appliances, and furniture.com for furniture. By utilising an identity graph, this retailer can unify customer profiles across all three domains to provide a seamless experience for each user. The goal is to leverage user behaviour and purchase data from one domain to recommend relevant products on another, thereby increasing the average revenue per user (ARPU).
Example scenario for the retailer
An example workflow in such a scenario could look like this: A user logs into groceries.com and frequently buys organic produce and cooking ingredients. Later, they visit homeappliances.com and search for kitchen appliances like blenders but leave without making a purchase. Then, they visit furniture.com to browse dining tables.
With a unified customer profile, the retailer can infer that this user is interested in enhancing their kitchen and dining setup. Consequently, on their next visit to groceries.com, the retailer could suggest blenders and food processors from homeappliances.com, accompanied by a promotional discount for cookware. On furniture.com, the retailer might highlight kitchen and dining-related items like bar stools or dining tables.
To implement cross-selling effectively, the retailer can use various channels to reach the customer. On-site recommendations can feature personalised banners or "You might also like" sections that display relevant products from other domains. Additionally, email campaigns can be curated to include the user’s browsing history along with tailored recommendations to complete their kitchen upgrade. Retargeting ads can also be utilised, employing programmatic ads to promote cross-domain products on social media or search engines, effectively re-engaging users who have already shown interest.
The benefits of such an approach are multifarious:
- Enhanced Personalisation: By consolidating behavioural data across websites, the retailer builds accurate and comprehensive customer profiles, enabling more targeted and relevant product suggestions.
- Increased Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): Recommending complementary products encourages repeat purchases and cross-category spending, driving up CLV.
- Improved Conversion Rates: Personalised recommendations reduce the time customers spend searching for products, leading to quicker and more frequent purchases.
- Efficiency in Marketing Spend: Focusing ad campaigns on users with demonstrated interest across domains ensures higher conversion potential, minimising wasted ad spend.
- Strengthened Customer Loyalty: Delivering consistent, relevant experiences across all domains enhances customer satisfaction, making them more likely to trust the retailer for various needs.
By integrating data from groceries, home appliances, and furniture domains, the retailer can effectively drive cross-category sales while providing a consistent and delightful experience for customers. This strategy harnesses customer intent across domains, transforming browsing behaviour into actionable insights that maximise revenue opportunities.
Some Considerations: Data Privacy and Security
Handling user identity information across domains raises significant privacy concerns. Businesses must ensure they have valid consent from users and comply with regulations like GDPR when building and maintaining ID graphs. Ensuring secure processing and storing of user attributes helps mitigate risks.
To address these challenges, ID graphs must be built in such a way that they respect the privacy rights of individuals, with mechanisms for data anonymisation and user control. Obtaining explicit consent before linking identities across domains and ensuring that users have easy access to opt-out features are critical elements for compliance and customer trust.
Ongoing Maintenance and Optimisation
Building an ID Graph is not a one-time process. It requires ongoing maintenance and optimisation to adapt to changing customer behaviours, evolving identifiers, and new technologies. As user behaviour and devices change, ID Graphs need to evolve to maintain accuracy and efficiency.
Regular audits of data quality and profile accuracy are crucial to ensure that the ID Graph remains useful. Additionally, optimisation efforts must include algorithmic adjustments to better identify when profiles should be merged or separated as new data is introduced.
Conclusion: Unifying Cross-Domain Profiles in One ID Graph
A cross-domain ID Graph presents an advanced approach to customer identity management, offering benefits that go beyond the capabilities of traditional ID stitching. Whether through login identification, clicks, or network signals, ID Graphs ensure a seamless experience by creating unified profiles that evolve with customer interactions. By managing identities comprehensively across all touchpoints, businesses can significantly enhance personalisation, drive insights, and improve customer experience—providing a cohesive customer journey across the entire digital landscape.
In conclusion, while ID stitching provides a simpler way to unify customer interactions, ID Graphs represent the future of identity resolution, particularly in a cross-domain context. They provide the sophistication required to deliver a seamless, secure, and insightful customer experience. Businesses must weigh the complexity and costs against the benefits to decide which approach will best meet their goals for customer experience and personalisation.
FAQ: ID Stitching vs. ID Graphs
To succeed, you need to explore and invest in advanced marketing technologies that prioritise privacy while ensuring effective data collection and analysis. Building your First Party data ID Graph is crucial: an accurate ID Graph offers multiple benefits for companies by increasing conversions rates, optimising media efficiency and improving attribution.
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