Crosswalking 101: What it is and why you should be utilizing it

Almost every brand we talk to has the same ask: “We want to make sure we are getting the most out of our customer data.” We also find brands feel overwhelmed with their customer data and don’t know where to start.

Many brands turn to a consumer graph license which provides the ability to bring identity resolution capabilities in-house. The brand manages all customer matching, measurement, enhancement, and analytics processes internally.

Talk about a lot of work! While a powerful tool, a graph license can be overkill for some companies’ identity resolution needs. They desire a simpler, hands-off solution.

Enter Throtle’s Crosswalking Solution.

What is Crosswalking?

Way back in the day, the ancient Egyptians documented their lives in hieroglyphics. Historians could not fully decode this written form of communication until the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, which contained hieroglyphics and the same text as two other languages. Scholars were able to match known words to unknown characters, thus cracking the code of the century.

Similarly, data stemming from disparate sources often need translating. Without the translation, it’s like knowing only a few characters in a stream of hieroglyphics. But brands need to know the meaning behind all of the characters, or data sets, to see the big picture and more genuinely reach their customers.

Crosswalking is like the Rosetta Stone of data, allowing marketers and data owners to harness the power of a consumer identity graph without possessing one. It takes advantage of multiple individual and household level match keys present in an identity graph and maps the equivalent fields across various datasets.

Why you need it

To Create Crystal-Clear Identity – Connect the dots between disparate datasets at scale, no matter how much or how big. Crosswalking matches it all, comparing offline-to-offline, offline-to-online, online-to-offline, or online-to-online (cross-device), and bringing all data into one place.

Superior Match Rates – The multiple match keys tied to an individual will yield more matches than a single data point alone.

Reduce Risk – Facilitate the transfer of data assets without exposing sensitive PII or intellectual property.

Transparent Pricing – Crosswalking is a flat fee service. Share data freely versus using data clean rooms, vaults or bunkers that charge a CPM on the amount of data shared.

True Data Democratization – While we own the identity graph, you maintain ownership over your data. Throtle will never remove or alter any of your raw data unless requested or when required to maintain compliance with data protection regulations.

How to utilize it

All of your data is matched. So, now what?

Build more targeted marketing campaigns by analyzing your 360-degree customer view. Now that you have united offline transaction data with online activity, you can make more personalized offers to consumers and limit the chance of anyone receiving mixed or irrelevant messaging.

Mutually combine CRM data with a partner or data provider in a privacy-safe way. Through this process, you can enable multiple parties to have full transparency and control over what data is accessed, by whom and how.

Clean data means better business planning and marketing optimization. Use your data to determine which channels and creatives are most (and least) effective for driving offline transactions, which were previously unmeasurable.