Why Your Identity Strategy Needs A Refresh
Everyone is talking about, planning for and providing guidelines, rules, and industry ‘do’s and don’ts’ surrounding consumer data. In this article, we set out to provide actionable information to help you strengthen your consumer information and understand the importance identity plays within your CRM file.
Consumer data is everywhere. Thanks to huge leaps in technology and enhanced collection methods, brands have access to more information about consumers than ever before.
But more data creates more problems, especially when such data is unattached to an identity. As cookies fade and privacy regulations continue to evolve at an unprecedented rate, the identity puzzle is becoming more complex. All the while, the consumer data pool keeps growing.
To keep from drowning in a sea of mystery data, brands need to evolve their identity strategies and tools to accommodate these constant industry changes. With a robust identity strategy, brands can generate insights and intelligence to relate to consumers through meaningful interactions, win consumers’ loyalty and deliver a seamless, standout experience — or lose to competitors who do.
Why Identity Matters
Consumers expect more than just hello. They expect a reciprocal relationship. They want personally relevant experiences and content based on who they are and their past interactions with a brand.
76% of customers expect that brands would understand them, their requirements and deliver accordingly. But around 51% of customers claim that most companies fail to provide great experiences. (source: segment)
A brand-to-consumer relationship at this level is a balancing act – between new product launches, new market expansion, audience targeting strategies, and personalized products and services, the scale becomes heavily one-sided. Once this relationship between the brand and consumer becomes unbalanced, it’s hard to recalibrate.
To achieve and maintain balance, brands need a comprehensive understanding of their audiences – where they live and work, what device they shop on, what device they purchase on, their hobbies, priorities, lifestyles, and so much more. Not only this, but brands must have in-depth knowledge of the complete consumer life cycle for their specific brand and assemble every inch of data available to create intelligent and actionable marketing solutions.
How An Active Identity Strategy Benefits Brands
Effective Personalization – Lack of consumer understanding leads to low quality and short-term relationships. Customers fade because of impersonalized messages and irrelevant brand experiences. With a trusted identity plan, marketers obtain an in-depth knowledge of their customers, ensuring that the right message gets delivered on the right channel to the right person every time.
Better Customer Insights – Using a persistent ID helps marketers clearly see the person on the other end of a browser, mobile app, TV, or IP address. This unfiltered picture lets companies create a single customer profile that can be consistently communicated and deployed across brands, business units, and product lines that facilitate greater control and personalization.
Data and Consumer Accuracy – To properly execute 1:1 marketing, the identity data and methodology you use must be accurate at the individual level. If not, you risk sending the wrong messages to customers at the wrong time. An individually based identity strategy provides a constant data stream that will dynamically validate customers as they interact in offline and online channels.
Privacy Compliant Identity – Well-executed identity resolution embraces industry best practices and principles that ensure data is harnessed in ethical, compliant, and privacy-safe ways. Easily secure the transfer of data, encrypt storage, regulate access and more.
Your Identity Plan
As the data industry, regulations and standards change in this new consumer-rights and privacy-centric era, a robust identity strategy is more important than ever. Identity must be the backbone of any brand striving to drive personalized experiences. It’s imperative that identity sits at the core of all marketing initiatives to truly understand customers as people who have multiple identity attributes. By distilling proper identities to a single and persistent ID, connecting and activating optimized data, brands will build deeper relationships with their customers that stand the test of time.