Marketing needs to be flexible and work wherever consumers are. Identity resolution is at the epicentre of a successful marketing strategy in today’s digital industry and is arguably the most important aspect of people-based marketing.
Research suggests that long-term customers spend 67 per cent more than new ones. These are the people that marketers want to keep sweet, and brands are looking for smarter ways to target these people based on their preferences, but it is far from easy.
The current challenge for brands that interact with a customer across numerous platforms, offline and online, is the build-up of multiple identifiers for each human being. According to Gartner, more than 90 per cent of marketers struggle to seamlessly connect more than three channels on the buyer journey. How can brands avoid disengaging customers and demonstrate how much they value them, when they continuously bombard them with the same message?
Identity Resolution allows brands to target their customers online. The challenge is that marketers must either target audiences with the same preferences or use their customers’ browsing history. Option one limits the available channels, option two relies on impersistent data.
Identity Resolution And The History Of Targeted Marketing
Identity Resolution is the process of connecting all identifiers used by different channels, platforms, and devices, so marketers can tie them back to one person. This enables a secure method of people-based targeting, measurement, and personalisation.
However, with so much data available, it’s easy to make the wrong connections between data points or miss them entirely. This means marketers and the companies supporting them could be overlooking valuable audience segments, duplicating effort, and creating a confused, incoherent customer experience.
The whole vision of digital, data-driven, tech-powered marketing was originally about reaching the right people, at the right time, in the right place. Over time, the aim has stayed the same, but marketers still haven’t all adopted this method of marketing.
Consumers are everywhere, and this needs to be looked at as an opportunity for brands, rather than a challenge. However, no-one has a complete picture, which poses a challenge for marketers when it comes to resolving consumers identities. When you consider that each person has multiple data identities, the digital ad platform can become an overcrowded place to navigate.
Therefore, marketers must ensure that they are aware of this fact: the more you learn about how consumers behave in different contexts, the smarter you get at improving offers and personalising campaigns. This is a win-win for both consumers, and marketers.
Analysing Customer Data Using A People-Based Approach
For any business, personalisation should be considered a key factor for growth – 65 per cent of consumers are more likely to shop at a retailer in-store or online that sends them relevant and personalised promotions. It has been proven that a people-based approach works – of the 92 per cent of marketers that engage in people-based advertising, 83 per cent of them see better results. Some 40 per cent of consumers said they have left a business’ website because they were overwhelmed by too many options when trying to make a decision. (Accenture Interactive’s Personalization Pulse Check 2016)
Marketers should be doing what they can to help customers by tailoring their marketing at every relevant opportunity. Using a people-based approach to marketing ensures more effective targeting, omnichannel measurement, and personalisation everywhere.
Make The Move To A People-Based Approach
If marketers haven’t already, they should approach the opportunity to use people-based marketing as a chance to advance. It is undeniable that personalisation should be considered a key factor for growth, but some marketers are yet to adopt this mindset.
In order for businesses to flourish, marketers need to ensure they are not bewildered by the sheer amount of data available to them – it should excite them.
Identity resolution does the hardest job for them.