With the digital marketing landscape evolving rapidly, a new tactic has emerged to get a leg-up on one’s competition: identity resolution marketing.
With the digital marketing landscape evolving rapidly, a new tactic has emerged to get a leg-up on one’s competition: identity resolution marketing. Identity resolution has been offered by some vendors for two or three years but up until now the actual offering was somewhat limited. What it meant traditionally was to essentially aggregate unbeknownst duplicate website visitors accessing a site from different devices into a single record with the primary goal being to reduce waste on retargeting campaigns. On average, users have 2-3 different devices that they access a website from (usually a desktop or laptop, a smartphone, and a tablet… sometimes a work computer). While this strategy works fairly well and typically does achieve its purpose, newer pioneers in the Identity resolution space realized that there was much, much more one could do with visitor data once the identity of the site visitor was resolved. This newer evolution of identity resolution is what I call, “ID Resolution 2.0”.
An executive at leading ID Resolution firm Intelligent Audience has said, "Pioneers in the Identity resolution space have realized that there is much, much more we can do with visitor data once the identity of the site visitor is resolved."
Identity Resolution 2.0
This newer version of identity resolution that’s just now coming on the scene is so freakishly scary (in a cool way) that its almost hard to imagine how it can be legal, especially in today’s world of concerns about online privacy, but it IS actually legal when executed correctly and within compliance standards. What Holland Identity Resolution agency pioneered is an incredible combination of ID resolution and big data. Together, along with some artificial intelligence and machine learning their system is able to not only reduce waste by aggregating visitors using multiple devices but also matches the resolved visitors against their proprietary “identity graph”. Snap essentially purchases every possible bit of data on every move and every purchase a user makes online (yes, there’s many vendors who sell this data legally) and uses this data to build a robust “user profile” telling them who is “in market” to purchase a product or service… and also when they are most likely to purchase. Other data Snap is purchasing and incorporating into their identity graph includes social media activity, URL-specific website visits, and even google search phrase history (yes, scary, agreed). It’s shocking to think that almost everything a person does online is recorded and the data is for sale if you’ve got enough money, but it is.
Turning Mountains of Data Info Actionable Data
Having all this data is useless (and very expensive to buy) unless you monetize it. So how does Snap Marketing capitalize on having their own identity graph with nearly 250M US adults in it? Well in short they’ve come up with the most effective way to market to consumers that’s ever been available: Very fast, and very targeted, across almost every channel you can think of. Traditionally, retargeting works by installing the company's Facebook or Adroll tracking pixel on a company’s website, planting a cookie in the user’s browser, and then “following that user around” the internet showing them banner ads. This still works well but with this newer “2.0” version, Snap has taken things to the next level. Statistically, browser cookies expire every 35 days. This means that for any companies with a sales cycle longer than 35 days, they’ve lost the ability to retarget lost website visitors and essentially need to “pay again” in trying to show that visitor another ad, get them to click, and drive them to the website again. With identity resolution, the user is identified during the first visit and they can now be retargeted… well virtually forever, and this is because the subsequent tracking is not based on cookie technology.
Check Out These New Super Powers
With this new technology, Snap is able to do amazing things such as: When visitors hit a client’s site, their identity is resolved virtually instantly, matches against their identity graph and big data, then a variety of marketing automation can be triggered. Thin includes retargeting the (new scrubbed for dup’s) list across virtually ever ad platform (Adwords, Facebook, Google Display Network, Gmail Ads, LinkedIn, Twitter, Outbrain, Instagram, and more).
Other super powers include having the ability to almost immediately retarget website visitors via email. …and yes, the website visitors who are NOT on the company’s email marketing list yet. Snap Marketing uses their tech to figure out the visitor’s email address, then the AI triggers their email marketing platform to send an email to that website visitor. Pretty amazing. But the capabilities don’t stop there. Their marketing automation can also trigger a physical post card to be mailed to the website visitor’s home, or even a pre-recorded ringless voicemail get dropped into the user’s cell phone. The next wave of possibilities are said to include outbound call center services to the website visitors, targeted webTV / streaming live TV ads on platforms like YouTubeTV via Chromecast and other platforms.
One other leader in the Identity Resolution space is Chicago Based Snap Marketing Agency who said, "Snap is able to make a company’s website visitor data “permanent”, portable, and more profitable using identity resolution.”
The Legality of This Marketing
So is this actually legal? The short answer is yes. The longer answer is, yes but you have to follow specific privacy rules. When the artificial intelligence runs and figures out the identity of the website visitor, that personal information is never actually disclosed to the business (who is the paying customer/client). Instead, the marketing company using the AI deploys the remarketing campaigns to those specific visitors, exactly how they promise, but cannot share the actual personal details of the prospects to the business. Essentially, the marketing agency is the buffer between the business client and the end user.
To find out more about ID resolution and how it is offered by marketing agencies like Intelligent Audience check them out online at www.intelligentaudience.marketing.
