Among the buzziest industry trends in 2018, the concept of identity resolution has emerged as a strategic imperative among marketers and technology vendors. As a recent Forrester report highlighted, accurately establishing and maintaining customer identity is one of the most perplexing challenges facing marketers today. Customers have footprints in the offline and online worlds, and tend to seamlessly transition across various channels and devices – presenting a unique challenge to truly understand who they are. But, the ability to stitch these disparate components of information together means marketers can make better decisions and have more meaningful interactions with their customers. And for customers, this means an experience with personalized advertising content more likely to resonate with them.
Why should marketers prioritize identity?
The ability to accurately identify customers is the most basic prerequisite for marketing analytics, orchestration and execution. As such, it is becoming increasingly important for brands and marketers planning to link together disparate systems of audience insights and engagement to foster a more seamless and personalized omnichannel customer experience. For example, if an advertiser can identify a customer’s interests, as well as how that person prefers to consume information, then the advertiser can create and deliver messaging that will resonate with the customer. However, like most competitive differentiators, the mission critical components to accurately determine an identity reside within the suite of identity management tools at the marketers’ disposal and the expertise required for proper execution – a struggle for most marketers. But when properly implemented, a comprehensive customer identity strategy can be among a brand or marketer’s the most valuable and proprietary assets.
Where to begin?
With the convergence of CRM platform data, cross-channel online touchpoints, offline record linkage management, probabilistic cross-device graphs, and data onboarding—evolving from point solutions to unified platforms—marketers are faced with an increasingly complex set of challenges in addressing and solving for customer identity management. To properly implement from the get go, and to avoid having to bolt on disparate technologies down the road, emerging industry trends and success stories suggest marketers need a neutral technology service provider that can provide each of these solutions via a single, unified platform. A vendor that can build a solid identity management foundation comprised of omni-channel targeting and attribution, cross-device resolution, online-offline linkage management, and data onboarding form the nexus of a cohesive identity strategy, built to last.
Enter Experian
With a trusted name in data and information services for more than 40 years, it’s best to work with a company such as Experian, which is committed to privacy by design and the responsible usage and security of data. Whether you’re a brand, agency, or publisher, Experian has the wide-ranging toolset to help you put people at the heart of your business and make better marketing decisions. By harnessing the power of the sum of these parts, fusing both offline and online identifiers and attributes, Experian has established a leadership position in identity management.
Learn about Experian’s new identity resolution solution set, MarketingConnect, at https://www.experian.com/marketing-services/identity-resolution.html.
A single customer view is more important than ever. Learn even more about why identity matters to marketers…and consumers, here.
Also, download Winterberry Group’s new identity resolution white paper, “Know Your Audience: The Evolution of Identity in a Consumer-Centric Marketplace.”