How Identity Matching Helps Brands Make Connections

Personalization is an imperative for the customer experience. Marketers know this: 88% believe that their customers expect a personalized experience, and nearly all believe that personalization advances relationships with customers.

But you can’t personalize unless you can identify your customers – no matter where they read your content, shop or interact with your brand.

That’s why smart brands don’t just know who and where their customers are.

Instead, those brands – and the data-driven marketers behind them – collect data, connect data and leverage Identity Matching to create a single view of their customer. Those connected insights are used to fuel predictions and create personalized campaigns that really make an impact.

Here are 4 ways Identity Matching can make a big impact for brands.

1. Create a consistent brand experience

Don’t interrupt the buyer’s journey with irrelevant messages or frustrating roadblocks. Understanding what your customers are buying, browsing and saying on social, mobile, in-stores and online allows you to meet your customers and their needs at every touchpoint.

Today’s customers are multi-channel, empowered and value brands that make their lives easier. More than half of consumers say brand experiences factor into their purchasing decisions. Identity Matching is essential for creating a smooth, delightful customer experience.

Retailers who used customer experience to stand out from the competition showed a revenue increase of 11% year over year, compared to just a 3.5% revenue increase for retailers who focused on value and convenience.

2. Understand the impact of your marketing efforts

Attribution remains a huge challenge for marketers to understand the ROI of their efforts – especially with disparate data points generated from campaigns executed across channels. Customers are touched by campaigns in across these channels, creating a nonlinear, messy buyer’s journey.

Without a single view of the customer, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to understand how these campaigns factor into the ultimate purchasing decision. A connected dataset enables stronger multichannel, multi-touch attribution.

Companies are taking note. According to the DMA, marketers will invest most significantly this year – to the tune of $3.5 billion – on datasets that support multi-channel efforts.

1. Learn how to connect your customers across channels in our latest ebook.

3. Reach customers on new channels

Connecting siloed channels allows you to unlock new marketing mediums, or reinvigorate old ones with refreshed messaging. Appending postal or email data allows you to send offers and messages in new ways, and better segment your list by location.

An online customer could be re-targeted and re-engaged through a postal campaign with an in-store offer, bridging the gap between channels. This multi-channel approach is a game-changer for some customers: About three-quarters of shoppers search more than one channel before making a purchase.

4. Create lookalike campaigns

Lookalike campaigns use a segment of your data to target prospects that “look” like your current customers on Facebook or other advertising networks. Because these prospects have similar characteristics as your current customers, they are more likely to engage, purchase or respond to your content.

Once your customers are connected to an email or email hash – their key central identifier – they can be uploaded to ad networks and used to create lookalike campaigns, effectively finding new prospects just like them.

Brands that harness Identity Matching will meet customer expectations, providing helpful and empathetic service across channels. By knowing their customers across channels, they will anticipate needs, streamline tasks and personalize offers. Embracing and using Identity Matching services, products and techniques will help brands build a deeper relationship with their customers and earn loyalty.

Identity Matching is a huge opportunity for brands to stand out with empathetic, seamless and simple customer experiences – or risk getting left behind.