Bridging disparate data in a fragmented world
In today’s world, consumers engage with brands across multiple platforms, including social media, online marketplaces, in-store experiences, and customer service touchpoints. However, the main challenge for marketers and advertisers is the fragmentation of customer data across these different channels. Each platform generates its own set of data, which is stored in different databases and formats. Integrating these various data sources to create a unified view of the customer is a complex task involving technology and understanding customer behavior across different digital and physical channels.
Businesses must link these data fragments to avoid creating a disconnected customer experience. For example, a person may browse products on a mobile app, ask questions through a customer service chat, and eventually purchase in an online marketplace. Traditional data analysis methods often need to recognize these activities as those of a single customer, which can result in missed opportunities to deliver personalized customer experiences across the customer journey.
Identity resolution: The key to a unified customer experience
Connecting online interactions across various platforms is a challenge for brands. Identity resolution enables enterprises to overcome this challenge by stitching together disparate signals and records to orchestrate experiences and analyze outcomes more effectively. By pairing Experian’s identity capabilities with AWS Clean Rooms, enterprises can securely collaborate with their partners to derive deeper insights without exposing sensitive underlying data sets.
This partnership between AWS and Experian enables effective matching between disparate data sets, bolstering privacy-enhanced media planning, insights, data enrichment, media activation, and measurement use cases. Depending on their distinct needs and existing identifiers, customers can use two specific offerings of Experian’s identity resolution solutions paired with AWS Clean Rooms.
Experian’s identity resolution products ensure a frictionless brand experience across various channels, enhancing the customer journey from start to finish. Brands can employ our adaptable identity resolution solutions to forge connections between contextual, behavioral, lifestyle, and purchase-based data sources, assembling comprehensive customer profiles. Use dependable digital data to make informed decisions and elevate consumer engagement. Advanced deterministic and probabilistic features, combined with data science and cutting-edge technology, work hand in hand to mitigate risk and uphold data privacy.
Such recognition enables a more comprehensive understanding of your clientele, fostering trust and amplifying campaign effectiveness by utilizing securely managed, standardized customer data. With this strategic approach, businesses can achieve their objectives regulatory-compliant.
The consumer perspective: Why consistency matters
Data fragmentation can lead to inconsistent experiences for consumers, which can be frustrating and erode brand trust. For instance, imagine receiving a promotional email for a product you already purchased through an app or being targeted for a product you decided against.
Consumers are increasingly tech-savvy and demand a seamless, integrated experience regardless of how they interact with a brand. They want to feel valued and recognized at every touchpoint and don’t care about the complexities of data analytics. As a result, brands face significant pressure to get identity resolution right.
Data security and privacy: A Fort Knox for your data
AWS Clean Rooms empowers their customers to establish a secure data clean room within minutes, facilitating collaboration with any other entity within AWS. This fosters the generation of unique insights regarding advertising campaigns, investment decisions, clinical research, and more. With AWS Clean Rooms, the need to store or maintain a separate copy of data outside the AWS environment for subsequent dispatch to another party for consumer insight analysis, marketing measurement, forecasting, or risk assessment becomes obsolete.
AWS Clean Rooms provides an expansive set of privacy-enhancing controls for clean rooms. This includes query controls, query output restrictions, and query logging that allows customers to tailor restrictions on the queries executed by each clean room participant. Moreover, AWS Clean Rooms include advanced cryptographic computing tools that maintain data encryption—even during query processing—to adhere to stringent data-handling policies. This process employs a client-side encryption tool—an SDK or command line interface (CLI)—that utilizes a shared secret key with other participants in an AWS Clean Rooms collaboration.
With a wealth of expertise in data privacy management, Experian enhances campaign effectiveness and fosters trust by managing standardized customer data securely. By using the identity graph, you can preserve a unique identity for each customer. This strategy enables you to comprehensively understand your clientele and reach your business objectives in a regulatory-compliant manner.
The future of data-driven marketing starts here
AWS customers can use AWS Clean Rooms to establish their own clean rooms in mere minutes, initiating the analysis of their collective data sets without sharing their underlying data with each other. Customers can use the AWS Management Console to choose their collaboration partners, select data sets, and configure participant restrictions. With AWS Clean Rooms, customers can effortlessly collaborate with hundreds of thousands of companies already using AWS without needing to move data out of AWS or upload it to a different platform. When running queries, AWS Clean Rooms accesses data in its original location and applies built-in, adaptable analysis rules to assist customers in maintaining control over their data.
Coupled with Experian’s trusted data privacy management and unique Experian ID, businesses can effectively manage customer data, secure partners’ communication, and achieve regulatory-compliance objectives. This combination allows companies to use data-backed insights to supercharge their marketing initiatives, resulting in more meaningful customer interactions, improved match rates, and business success.
About the authors
Kalyani Koppisetti, Principal Partner Solution Architect, AWS
Kalyani Koppisetti is a technology leader with over 25 years of experience in the Financial Services Industry. In her current role at AWS, Kalyani advises financial services partners on best-practice cloud architecture. Kalyani works closely with internal and external stakeholders to identify industry technical trends, develop strategies, and execute them to help Financial Services Industry partners build innovative solutions and services on AWS. Technical and Solution interests include Cloud Computing, Software-as-a-Service, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Storage Virtualization and Data Protection.
Matt Miller, Business Development Principal, AWS
In his role as Business Development Principal at AWS, Matt drives customer and partner adoption for the AWS Clean Rooms service specializing in advertising and marketing industry use cases. Matt believes in the primacy of privacy-enhanced data collaboration and interoperability underpinning data-driven marketing imperatives from customer experience to addressable advertising. Prior to AWS, Matt led strategy and go-to-market efforts for ad technologies, large agencies, and consumer data products purpose-built to inform smarter marketing and deliver better customer experiences.
Tyler Middleton, Sr. Partner Marketing Manager, Experian Marketing Services
Tyler Middleton is the Partner Marketing Lead at Experian. With almost 20 years of strategic marketing experience, Tyler’s focus is on creating marketing strategies that effectively promote the unique value propositions of each of our partners’ brands. Tyler helps our strategic partners communicate their mutual value proposition and find opportunities to stand out in the AdTech industry. Tyler is an alumnus of the Seattle University MBA program and enjoys finding new marketing pathways for our growing partner portfolio.
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It’s almost that time of the year again, the time to put away fourth of July merchandise and replace it with this year's favorite superhero backpacks. It’s almost back-to-school season, and parents and kids from kindergarten to college are preparing for school's "new normal." To navigate the challenge of 2021, Experian’s Marketing Analytics team is sharing Back-to-School shopping season insights with you. Download the eBook to learn more. Our outlook about this year's Back-to-School shopping season can help you better plan and improve your marketing effectiveness. The report covers who's actively shopping for school supplies, whether they're shopping in-person or online, and what they're buying this year. Here's a summary of what you'll learn in the report: Who (specifically) is shopping for back-to-school supplies this year? More than half of online searches related to Back-to-School were made by a small set of consumer segments. We’ve identified 4 Mosaic® groups as being in-market for back-to-school merchandise. To find these types of consumers, we used online behavioral data and filtered for households with school-age children between 5 and 15 years old. Each group, such as Flourishing Families, share similar shopping behaviors and needs. While each group of consumers has a need for Back-to-School merchandise, they have different circumstances that require more personalized marketing. Let's break down each Mosaic® group to better understand their size and key features so that you can build more personalized messaging. Contact us for segments and insights specific to your brand. Power Elite As you can see in our Mosaic® product brochure, Power Elite is categorized as Group A. This is the largest group analyzed in the report, accounting for 4.5 million U.S. households. Here are the Power Elite consumer types actively shopping for back-to-school merchandise this year: A01: American Royalty A03: Kids and Cabernet A04: Picture Perfect Families Key Features: Wealthy Highly Educated Politically conservative Purchase housewares and electronics in store Vacation and fitness retail influencers Luxury lease cars Flourishing Families Also called Group B in this report, Flourishing Families is comprised of 3.7 million U.S. households. Active consumer types: B07: Across the Ages B08: Babies and Bliss B09: Family Fun-tastic Key Features: Affluent Charitable contributors Athletic activities High-priced children’s clothing Home products & furnishings Sporting good Suburban Style Suburban Style, also Group D, is made up of 2.9 million U.S. households. Active consumer types: D15: Sport Utility Families D16: Settled in Suburbia Key Features: Comfortable lifestyle Ethnically diverse Politically diverse Instagrammers Children’s games Wholesale members Family Union The Family Union group, Group I, is the smallest of those analyzed in this report, but still a respectable size: 1.2 million U.S. households. Active consumer types: I31: Hard Working Values Key Features: Bilingual Married with kids Large households Hunting clothing Automotive tools Will they shop online or in stores? Prepare for a return to in-store shopping as the US moves post-pandemic. These consumers have shopped in-store for Back-to-School and have trended toward in-store shopping as the vaccine was distributed. Mobile location data shows these consumers actively shopped in-person during the 2019 Back-to-School season, and are shopping in-person again post-pandemic. Experian analyzed consumer mobile location data for big box retailers, department stores, malls and apparel-accessory stores since June 2019. The aggregated number of visits was indexed each month against 12-month average of that respective year. An index higher than 100 indicates shopping behavior that month was higher than the average of that year. An index less than 100 indicates shopping behavior that month was less than the average of that year. Planning store layouts and inventory will be more important this year for marketers as consumers return to the stores for Back-to-School shopping needs. What will they buy? Plan for Back-to-School product composition to be like pre-pandemic while you plan your inventory. Keep an eye on local outbreak risk which dictates whether school districts will pivot to remote learning. Product composition during the 2020 Back-to-School season was skewed away from apparel and towards virtual learning materials, such as home office supplies and technology, but should revert to pre-pandemic behaviors. Using ConsumerViewTM Transactional data, we compared consumer product composition during the 2019 and 2020 back-to-school shopping seasons. Children’s Apparel and Accessories: share was smaller in 2020, and was a more dramatic impact for Groups A, B, and D. Books: Groups B and D saw an increased share in 2020, but Groups A and I saw little change. Home Office: share was greater in 2020 for all groups, particularly Group A. Computers: share was greater in 2020 for all segments, particularly Group I Want to learn more? Improve your marketing ROI and grow your business during back-to-school season using Experian’s new Discovery Platform. No sign-up required: watch the demo to learn how retailers like you can use The Discovery Platform™ to track online versus in-store shopping and safely navigate evolving back-to-school consumer behaviors.
Third-party cookies have been a crucial component in people-based advertising and digital identity. With Google's recent announcement of delaying third-party cookie deprecation to 2024, the industry has more time to rethink how to effectively identify and communicate with consumers when the time comes. Preparing for cookie deprecation Solving for the post-cookie world is mission critical, particularly as consumer expectation for a relevant digital experience is heightened. We’ve seen a number of industry participants, including brands, publishers, data providers and technology platforms, work around the clock to find an alternative to third-party cookies—one that amasses the same scale and reach but also maintains consumer privacy. In fact, industry insights echo that sentiment. According to a white paper from Winterberry Group, Collaborative Data Solutions: The Evolution of Identity in a Privacy-First, Post-Cookie World, sponsored in part by Experian, one of the most frequently heard comments was the urgency for the industry to develop post-cookie, privacy compliant solutions that work in a more integrated manner. And if there was one overarching position regarding the research into the future of identity, it’s that collaboration is key. Participants in the white paper expressed that with the elimination of third-party cookies, there will be a surge in collaborative solutions across and within companies to accommodate changes in the digital marketplace. Collaborative data solutions must move beyond new post-cookie identity replacements and encompass more holistic approaches, including first-party data. First-party data sharing Currently, 64.3 percent of organizations in the US collaborate with other organizations to share first-party data for insights, activation, measurement or attribution, and 16.7 percent in the U.S. have plans to. Virtually all US companies surveyed were aware of the option to collaborate with other organizations and expressed openness to discussions around sharing first-party data. What is the solution to third-party cookie deprecation? The deprecation of third-party cookies is creating a shock in the marketing and advertising world because there has been an over-dependence on one type of identifier. Therefore, the solution to identify consumers across the digital ecosystem will not come from a single replacement for third-party cookies. Instead, it will rely on a combination of solutions, including collaborative data between organizations and implementation of proprietary first-party data strategies, as well as a framework that can connect all these touchpoints together. Experian can help you navigate the cookieless future Experian is focused on building a more effective advertising ecosystem that promotes the interoperability of digital touchpoints while enabling and fostering new innovations in a privacy forward way. Contact us today and get started with building connected identity in the ever-changing data landscape. To learn more, watch the recording of our webinar with The Vitamin Shoppe where we discuss identity and how you can drive more addressable audience strategies amidst diminishing data signals.
As today’s digital landscape gets more and more complicated there are more ways for brands to connect with users and drive purchases and more ways for ad tech to target and measure those touch points. As in-person shopping picks up steam due to the re-normalization of society post-COVID 19; the connection between digital ads and in-person purchases needs to be made once again. With the rise of Connected TV throughout the pandemic there are even more digital opportunities to target a user. But how do you make sure that those brand engagements are captured and correctly attributed to offline purchases and conversions? The answer lies in a holistic identity resolution strategy. Cross-device identity resolution with The Tapad Graph connects the identifiers and devices of individuals within a household to each other; enabling targeting, frequency capping, extension, segmentation and measurement or attribution between devices; including Connected TV and hashed (privacy-protected) email addresses along with Cookies, Mobile Ad Ids and IP Address. Brands can join their first-party data to The Tapad Graph to execute strategies that connect online and offline data for pre, mid and post-campaign efficiencies. Let’s imagine a scenario in which an outdoor retail brand is targeting users watching specific content on a Connected TV device. Powered by identity resolution, they start with a general ad on CTV and continue targeting down individual paths with each user. When one of them converts in store and makes a purchase; the outdoor retailer can connect that action through location and in-store traffic data with the cross-device identity resolution used to execute the digital campaign. Now the actions of the user online and offline are resolved for more accurate measurement and attribution after the campaign ends. But it doesn’t stop there– the brand's CRM data can be reactivated for the next digital campaign and leveraged to capitalize on the most effective media mix for the user who made the purchase previously. These combined insights can be invaluable in shaping up future campaign strategies with geo-contextual ads, recommended additional products and personalization to help drive more conversions and purchases in-store or online. As in-person shopping picks back up and marketers are tasked once again with balancing online and in-store KPIs, the right identity resolution strategy can unlock necessary efficiencies for retailers, ad tech vendors and agencies tasked with supporting these initiatives. Get started with The Tapad Graph For personalized consultation on the value and benefits of The Tapad Graph for your business, email Sales@tapad.com today!