How Identity Management and Resolution Improves Consumer Intelligence

Learn from Matt Stone how identity management and resolution help deepen customer connections and guide decisions on optimizing marketing efforts.

November 24, 2022

In this article, Matt Stone, senior vice president of marketing, Verisk Marketing Solutions, focuses on identity resolution and why using consumer data helps marketers better understand and deepen customer connection by creating highly relevant and personalized customer experiences that ultimately increase ROI. 

Delivering the perfect message to the right audience at the right place and at just the right time is the objective of every marketing initiative. Successful marketers know that in today’s data-driven environment, effective marketing must cut through the seemingly endless stream of content that consumers endure. Knowing your consumers is more important than ever. 

I recently wrote about the value of using behavioral data to assess consumer intent and how data can create opportunities for marketers to build and nurture valuable customer relationships and convert leads into customers. 

Taking this concept a step further, we can explore the role of identity management and identity resolution to help deepen customer connections and guide decisions on optimizing marketing efforts to individual consumers.

See More: 5 Steps To Clean Up Your Customer Data

Identity Management

Accurate consumer data is at the heart of identity management. Using current and accurate demographic data, marketers can create highly relevant and personalized consumer experiences. Effective identity management programs help marketers understand what consumers truly want (hint: personalization is at the top of the list). 

According to a 2022 survey by AdobeOpens a new window , 72% of consumers say poor personalization decreases trust in a brand. Consumers want personalized communication from the brands they interact with, which means offering flexible access to content using the platforms and devices consumers prefer. To build trust, marketers must understand these needs and look to data to help create the actionable content consumers demand.

Getting personalization right is mission-critical, yet not all marketers inherently know who their customers are or who their best customers are. Identity data can help find the right customers and avoid wasting time and resources marketing to the wrong people. More importantly, with only one or two chances to get it right, data can help prevent sending irrelevant messaging and missing an opportunity for conversion. 

Marketers who embrace personalization and get to know their customers add value by leading them to products and services they can use — a winning strategy. Through data-driven marketing, marketers can put their knowledge to work by understanding who their customers are and who they are not to provide relevant and personalized shopping experiences.

Identity Management Data Creates a Single View of the Consumer

Identity management gathers a comprehensive picture of the consumer, including their shopping and device preferences and lifestyle data, which can be used to understand how individual consumers engage with a brand’s presence across websites, mobile apps, stores, emails, digital ads, and other platforms.

Identity management links static demographic information about an individual (e.g., location, income, or personal attributes such as homeownership data, etc.) with real-time behavioral data — data that alerts marketers when consumers take specific actions that signal purchase intent. These attributes paint a single view of a consumer. 

Marketers can identify potential buyers early in the buying cycle, educate them with memorable content, and nurture them throughout their journey.

The right data is valuable in understanding and deepening the connection with customers and prospects. In lead-driven fields, such as insurance or mortgage lending, behavioral data provides information about a lead, such as its age and origin. Layering demographic information on top reveals who the person is behind the lead. This signal data is particularly helpful in research-intensive industries. A Forrester studyOpens a new window found lenders and banks were able to increase acquisition, retention, and cross-sell efforts by 191% over three years using behavior signals.

Identity Resolution Improves Your Customer Data

Identity resolution is the process of bringing together the attributes, interactions, and identity of a single consumer across channels and devices. It links personal attributes such as name, address, email, phone, mobile ad ID, hashed email, and transaction activities all in one connected and matched customer profile.

By resolving a consumer’s identity, brands avoid having multiple profiles for the same customer, and marketers know exactly who their customers are with a single focused view. Once identity is resolved, marketers can target relevant messaging at every stage of the journey and across all channels, resulting in valuable personalized interactions that build trust.

Knowing your ideal customers and connecting with them across any marketing channel can help guide outreach to other consumers who fit your target customer profile. Targeting only the right consumers saves valuable time and resources while boosting ROI.

Keeping Pace With Evolving Technology and Consumer Behavior

Consumer identity management programs can turn unknown prospects into well-known customers, each with a single, complete identity. 

Using identity management tactics, marketers can use data to increase conversions by improving and customizing web forms, inbound call tracks, and outbound campaigns. Data can help improve lead quality and attribution post-sale and aid marketers in maintaining high-quality CRMs and CDPs.

There is tremendous value in incorporating a singular customer view across channels and developing a complete identity capability. However, as technology and consumer behavior continuously evolve, consumers’ identities often change. People move more frequently than they did even 20 years ago; life changes, and people move on. Yet your data stays the same unless you’re on top of it. It is worthwhile to have strategies in place to monitor these natural changes as well as the data to keep identities up-to-date and actionable.

It may seem elementary to say marketers need to know a lot about their customers, but identity management can be challenging, especially with consumers constantly moving between devices and platforms. This movement creates disparate sources of first-party data and the challenge of accurately capturing, analyzing, activating, and storing that data within CRMs and CDPs. Because of data decay and rapidly changing consumer data, 25% of stored identities are wrong or have incomplete information at any given time. 

Privacy and Consent Considerations

Sophisticated marketers with operations seeking out identity management solutions that improve engagement with consumers, prospects, or leads know that securing consumer consent is critical. It ensures the consumer has said ‘yes’ to allowing their information to be used and that the person is who you think they are. 

Data privacy demands must be balanced with consumer demand for personalized content. Consumer identity management is more than converting leads it must prioritize consumer privacy. Getting consumers engaged can be challenging, but a privacy-first focused identity management program makes it easier.

When it comes to consumer privacy and personalization, marketers must be mindful of maintaining the highest standards for data security and respect for consumer privacy, preference, and permission. To mitigate risks associated with TCPA complaints or lawsuits, all data partners should share the highest standards for privacy. 

See More: Marketers: It’s Time To Offer Customers Real Value if You Want Their Data

Standing out in today’s fast-paced digital environment requires knowing your customers and prospects and building an identity management program. By using behavioral insights, brands can create exceptional customer experiences by targeting the consumers they want to interact with.

A personalized engagement strategy that reaches customers or prospects when they are interested and in-market (showing intent to act) creates long-term loyalty and builds trust.

Companies across industries such as insurance, media, mortgage, and finance look to identity resolution and consumer intelligence data to power sophisticated marketing offerings. Whether through an in-house team or with a data partner, identity management solutions can help marketers make critical business decisions with confidence and improve the value of the programs they lead. 

Real-time identity resolution and consumer intelligence solutions help marketers break new ground in the ever-changing online marketing landscape. 

How has identity management and resolution helped you optimize marketing efforts? Share with us on FacebookOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , and LinkedInOpens a new window .

Image Source: Shutterstock

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Matt Stone
Matt Stone

Senior Vice President of Marketing, Verisk

Matt Stone is senior vice president of marketing at Verisk Marketing Solutions, a leading data partner for the insurance and mortgage industries. Matt has 25 years of experience driving loyalty, online acquisition, and revenue for SaaS start-ups and global technology brands. Prior to joining Jornaya, a Verisk Business, Matt held executive roles at Photon, 1E, and Real Capital Analytics.
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