What Is An Identity Graph? Definition, What It Does, and Why You Should Be Using One
First, just think of an identity graph as a massive Excel sheet or Google Sheet in the cloud.
A huge database that creates linkages and stores all of the unique identifiers of the people that matter the most to you.
The people that mean the most to you are your customers and your future customers.
These identifiers are things like:
When this data is correctly stitched together, it becomes extremely valuable and even more so over time.
“Stitched” is the key word here because you need to be able to connect all of these data points to the right person.
But all of your marketing and sales analytics tools have been counting each person as a unique user.
For example, if you look in your Google Analytics account, you will notice that your website has an abnormally high # of “new visitors”.
This is because people are using multiple devices across multiple browsers every day.
Your analytics tools are counting all visits, from each device, and each browser, as a unique person. So, to you, it always looks like you’re starting at square 1.
Companies are using a number of different tools (like CRMs, marketing enablement, email, social media automation, etc..) that store a lot of prospect and customer data.
Each of these tools has its own massive silo of very valuable data and businesses are paralyzed when it comes to connecting all of these silos together.
This is where an Identity Graph comes in
It’ll give you a strong, robust set of actionable data that you can use for almost anything.
ID graphs are extremely powerful and are made specifically to manage your connections between billions of identities within milliseconds.
Not only do you need a graph, but you also need to know how to use it to get to where you want to go.
Technology that tells you everything you need to know about someone.
A single view of every person that you care about.
5 Reasons Why You Need An Identity Graph
..as told by Martech Advisor in what is an identity graph?
- Flexbility, security, and control over your data
- Cross-device attribution
- Consistently improving “single customer view”
- Online and offline engagement
- Personalized customer experiences
An identity graph achieves this singular customer view through deterministic matching making each match 100% accurate.
If you put our SMART pixel on your website, we would tell you the names of the people who are on your website and be 100% accurate.
There are other companies out there that use probabilistic matching and will tell you that they can tell you who’s on your website.
In reality, they’re just going to try to tell you the companies and accounts that are on your site. “Try” because they are using IP-based resolution. IP-based data is often outdated, incorrect, or just non-existent.
Check out my take on the inefficiencies of IP-based intent data.
We’re using our graph to help businesses increase their net-new business while defending the business they already have.
Identity graphs are going to be popping up all over the place in the years to come, but how they’re used is even more important than having one.
It’s inevitable that you will be using an identity graph in your company at some point.
It just might not be ours, but it’d be great if you did!
