New digital identity strategies needed … now

Innovative digital identity strategies are needed to increase customer engagement, generate revenue, and maintain high privacy standards.

Chat with MarTechBot

Successful customer engagement consists of a series of interactions and communications, backed up with data captures, all based on an enterprise-wide identity experience. The best identity strategies satisfy two of the highest priorities for consumer digital experience—maintaining data privacy while driving personalization. 

But yesterday’s best practices are not going to promote future success. The digital experience is changing and broadening all the time—think voice assistants, wearable technology, and speech-enabled televisions. 

“The current methods of digital identity and targeting are crumbling and will soon be gone,” said Acxiom Head of Global Identity Practice Kyle Hollaway during his presentation ‘Solving the Enterprise Identity Problem,’ at Discover MarTech. “How we engage brands and each other has changed.”

Earlier this month, MarTech Today detailed the wide-ranging capabilities of identity resolution platforms.

“Building the right identity is not a point-in-time effort or a spot solution, it is a highly orchestrated process,” said Hollaway. “Following consumers across all digital platforms is hard, but it is necessary.”

Hollaway recommends five steps in building a robust customer identity profile—but even before that process begins the incoming data must be as complete as possible, clean, and consistent. This is critical to build data-based identity, no matter where the data is coming from, whether it is mobile, website, or in-person marketing programs. Data hygiene is step one. 

Related: See our buyer’s guide for identity resolution platforms

Step two pushes for a complete identity profile, by appending non-digital data, like address and phone number, to the digital data stream. The third step is identity resolution, that should build upon existing data to add both personal information and preferences that directly lead to revenue generation. Information from both identity inputs in stage one should be combined during the identity resolution stage.  “Data captured in the proper digital identity process only increases in value and efficiency over time,” said Hollaway.

The identity enrichment stage follows identity resolution. This emphasizes the addition of contextual information—is the customer a mother, a car owner, or has she just bought a house? The depth of information collection at this stage can set the foundation for delivering relevant experiences, thereby creating long-term revenue opportunities.

Image 3

The final but crucial stage is identity compliance, ensuring maximum data privacy and security. Privacy by design is vital in this final stage. 

As an example of a successful identity strategy, Hollaway points to a client in the global financial sector that completed all these steps. The challenges included tracking identity across offline and digital channels, matching site to app visitors in real-time, and working towards accurate cross-device attribution.

The solution was to develop a brand-unique identity graph, combining first-party data with third-party identity reference graph data, while adhering to data privacy regulations. The result was an increase of 25% in successful matching, leading to substantial growth in revenues, and a forecasted growth rate of $4 million to $5 million per year. 

Brands that adopt this approach will see happier customers and a better bottom line, said Hollaway. “It all starts with accurate and timely data to build an efficient experience.”


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Rodric Bradford
Contributor
Rodric J. Bradford was an Editor of MarTech Today and has worked in the marketing technology industry as both a journalist and corporate project manager. Prior to joining MarTech Today Bradford served as Convention and Technology Beat Reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Business Press publication and worked as Technology Reporter for Global Gaming Business, the world’s largest casino publication. In the corporate world Bradford has served as Technology Project Manager for CNA, Cigna, General Dynamics and Philip Morris. Bradford is an alumnus of the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Get the must-read newsletter for marketers.