Key Identity Resolution and Data Activation Processes for Marketers
Kutubkhan Bohari
May 15, 2023

Discover the transformative potential of identity resolution and data activation processes. Unlock the key to driving engagement and craft highly personalized and impactful marketing strategies.

Demand for hyper-personalization and omnichannel experiences, along with their associated marketing and measurement components, has witnessed a substantial increase in recent years. Given the escalating consumer expectations for seamless user experiences and their increased privacy awareness, driven by significant data breaches, marketers are offered a valuable opportunity to pause momentarily and strategically reevaluate their approach to personalization.

With the constantly changing digital landscape, marketers face the challenge of understanding and engaging with their target audience across multiple channels and devices. In addition, businesses need a comprehensive understanding of their customers' identities and preferences. This is where innovative data management and marketing automation platforms, along with identity resolution and data activation solutions come into action.

Crucial Identity Resolution and Data Activation Processes

Identity resolution and data activation help businesses in resolving customer identities across various touchpoints and channels, enabling them to gain a comprehensive understanding of their customer's behaviors, preferences, and needs. These solutions also assist them in capitalizing on their valuable customer data to drive informed decision-making, optimize marketing strategies, and deliver tailored experiences, leading to increased customer engagement and conversion rates.

However, achieving accurate identity resolution and successful data activation is no simple task. It requires meticulous planning, advanced technological capabilities, and a deep understanding of data management principles. Businesses face numerous challenges in these identity management processes, such as dealing with disparate data sources, ensuring data quality and integrity, navigating privacy regulations, and managing data security risks. The followings are the fundamental identity resolution and data activation processes for businesses and marketers:

Identity Resolution

Identity resolution is combining and consolidating data from various sources to identify and attribute activities and behaviors to individual customers accurately. It aims to resolve the challenge of fragmented data across disparate systems, devices, and touchpoints. Marketers can gain deeper insights into their customers and their buying behavior by unifying customer data into a single and holistic view, enabling personalized and more targeted marketing efforts.

  1. Data Collection: The foundation of identity resolution lies in collecting data from various sources, including online and offline channels. These sources may include website interactions, social media profiles, transactional data, customer surveys, and more. Each piece of information contributes to building a comprehensive customer profile. The process enables marketers to connect and consolidate customer identities across multiple touchpoints, thereby unlocking valuable insights, driving personalized experiences, and enhancing overall marketing effectiveness.
  2. Data Cleansing and Validation: Once the data is collected, it is essential to clean and validate it to ensure accuracy and quality, as there is a significant increase in the volume and complexity of data. The data cleansing and validation process involves identifying and rectifying inconsistencies, inaccuracies, and redundancies in customer information. Data cleansing involves removing duplicates, standardizing formats, and correcting inconsistencies. Validation ensures that the collected data is reliable and up-to-date. The process enables businesses to derive meaningful insights, enhance customer segmentation, and deliver targeted and personalized marketing experiences.
  3. Identity Linkage: Identity linkage involves connecting disparate data points to create a cohesive customer identity. This process leverages basic data management processes, such as deterministic ID matching and probabilistic ID matching, to establish relationships between data sets and attributes. This assists businesses and marketers in establishing connections and linkages between disparate data elements, including email addresses, phone numbers, and social media handles, to form a cohesive customer identity graph. The process enables them to derive actionable insights and cultivate long-term customer relationships.
  4. Identity Graph Creation: The creation of an identity graph is a pivotal step in the identity resolution process, enabling businesses to establish accurate and comprehensive linkages between customer identities across various channels and devices. An identity graph serves as a powerful framework that connects and resolves fragmented data points, allowing businesses to gain a holistic view of individual customers. By using a scalable identity graph, businesses can achieve accurate customer recognition, deliver personalized experiences, optimize marketing campaigns, and improve overall customers.

Discover the transformative potential of identity resolution and data activation processes. Unlock the key to driving engagement and craft highly personalized and impactful marketing strategies.

Data Activation

Data activation is the process of utilizing unified customer data to inform and execute targeted marketing initiatives across various channels and touchpoints. It involves transforming raw data into actionable insights and implementing marketing strategies based on those insights. It empowers marketers to deliver personalized experiences, improve customer engagement, and optimize marketing campaign performance. Data activation platforms utilize the insights gained from identity resolution software and deliver relevant messages, offers, or content through various marketing channels. The key steps in data activation include the following:

  1. Data Analysis and Insights Generation: Data analysis is at the core of data activation processes. Marketers must leverage data analytics tools and techniques to extract meaningful insights from the collected data. This involves examining patterns, trends, correlations, and other statistical measures to uncover actionable information. Advanced analytics techniques, such as predictive modeling and machine learning algorithms, help marketers identify critical predictors of customer behavior and preferences. These insights enable marketers to make informed decisions and optimize their marketing strategies for better results.
  2. Data Segmentation and Audience Profiling: Segmentation is an essential data activation process that enables marketers to divide their target audience into distinct groups based on shared characteristics, preferences, or behaviors. As a result, marketers can create personalized marketing campaigns tailored to each group's specific needs and interests by segmenting their audience. Segmentation and audience profiling allow for more precise targeting and tailoring of marketing messages to specific customer groups, empowering businesses to activate their data intelligently and ensuring that marketing efforts resonate with target audiences and drive meaningful results.
  3. Campaign Execution and Optimization: Once insights are generated, marketers can execute targeted marketing campaigns across various channels and touchpoints. This involves delivering personalized content, offers, and messages to specific audience segments. Marketing automation platforms play a crucial role in executing data-driven campaigns. These platforms enable marketers to automate personalized content delivery based on predefined triggers and customer actions. By utilizing automation, marketers can ensure timely and relevant customer interactions, improving the overall customer experience.

On the other hand, to optimize campaign performance, marketers must constantly monitor and measure key performance indicators (KPIs). This includes tracking metrics, such as click-through rates, conversion rates, engagement levels, and revenue generated. Marketers can identify areas for improvement, make data-driven optimizations, and refine their strategies for better results by analyzing campaign data.

The Bottom Line

In an era where customer-centricity is paramount, implementing proper identity resolution and data activation processes is becoming essential for marketers to stay competitive and deliver exceptional experiences that resonate with their target audience. Businesses can transform raw data into actionable insights, enabling precise segmentation, targeted messaging, and optimized marketing campaigns using effective identity resolution and data activation processes.
Implementing proper identity resolution and data activation processes is critical for ensuring that businesses deeply understand the customers and their behavior, leading to more effective engagement, improved customer satisfaction, and increased brand loyalty.