To date, LiveRamp has focused on its key use case – data onboarding, the process of uploading first party data and activating across digital channels. Put simply, onboarding enables you to identify and retarget your existing customers, anywhere.
The connecting of offline segments with online platforms is the first step to a true omnichannel view. The next step is to use this single view to understand every customer as an individual and the role that every touch point plays in that all-important customer relationship.
Ultimately, this process of identity resolution is the key to enabling true, people-based marketing.
So, what is identity resolution, how does it work, and how can it feed into every aspect of your marketing plan?
Why is identity resolution the foundation of marketing?
Imagine having a great conversation with a customer and then realising you were talking to the wrong person – or you were talking to the right person either too soon or too late, missing the signals of need and desire. Or maybe you got the timing just right but pitched the wrong product or service.
Your efforts would be wasted and, at worst, your customer might even walk away.
Great brand experiences happen only when they are built on robust views of the customer, from wide-ranging online and offline data sources and interactions. And they happen only when your stewardship of data gains you the trust and confidence of customers and prospects, which drives engagement.
Increased engagement feeds insight, building the brand experience. What you get is a continuous and highly effective feedback loop – a virtuous circle.
The increased availability and use of multiple channels is a given for marketers now. What it means is that consumers identify themselves in a multitude of different ways – whether it’s a device ID, an anonymous cookie, or an email address. Unless you can resolve these multiple identities back to a single, real human being, you’ll continue to treat them as different people, and your communication with them will be inconsistent, unremarkable and ineffective.
You’ll be missing out on the virtuous circle and risking that customer walking away.
How does identity resolution work?
LiveRamp resolves these various identities in a privacy-safe way using de-identified data, sourcing and connecting hundreds of different identifiers back to real people. We use a deterministic matching process to resolve device IDs, cookies and emails to real people.
Identity resolution gives marketers the power to leverage the masses of data that exist today, and ultimately achieve what marketers have always sought to do: Have a meaningful conversation with the people who matter.
Sound good? Take a look at Why Identity Resolution matters to every marketer that explains identity resolution in more detail.