What Is Identity Resolution?

Definition, What It Does, and Why It Matters

Identity Resolution is the process of collecting different identifiers across devices to build out a cohesive, omnichannel view of your customers and prospects

It gives you a bird’s eye view of the people who mean the most to your company. Your customers and your future customers.

Identity refers to the anonymous profile of your prospect that is gathered across all devices. If you rounded up all of the data from someone’s laptop, web browser, cell phone, email subscriptions, and purchases, you could develop a complete picture of that person.

However, all of this data is virtually untouchable to you because it’s anonymized so you don’t really get any identifying information. You might know their gender, age, location, and what content they consume, but that alone will only get you so far.

Resolution is the means of bringing all of this data together to form one profile of a person. Each person’s device has crucial, valuable information.. data. It gets left behind as they surf the web. If you combine all of this data into one profile, marketers will have a much better idea of who this person is… no matter which screen they’re in front of.

Where Most Companies Struggle

Right now, most brands and companies are struggling to connect the dots on these people and build out that 360-degree customer view.

Everyone is using different devices throughout the day & using different emails for different things.

How many of us use a 15-year-old email for the sole purpose of logging into social media platforms or other software/websites?

You don’t use it to send or receive email anymore.. so it’s not monitored, but we use it every day to log in to one website or another. This is one of the most important unique identifiers when it comes to identity resolution.

That 15-year-old email is what’s going to help connect the dots on your best prospects and recognize the person behind the screen.

What’s the Future of Identity Resolution?

Mara Chapin, a digital and social media specialist at Market Mentors out of Massachusetts, says that privacy challenges could force marketers to rely on other customer analyses in addition to identity resolution.

Chapin also agrees that identity resolution is the key to a good marketing strategy.

Knowing who your audience is and being able to segment them based on where they are in their buyer journey will change the game.

What’s the Best Way to Leverage Identity Resolution?

Short answer, to grow and protect your company.

So let’s dive in.

If you know who people are you can start to figure out what they’re in-market for.. or the things they’re “shopping” for, all the way down to the person-level.

An entire pool of people who are in-market for the exact thing you sell? How could it get better than that?

This is how you’ll grow your revenue.. grow your company.

What would you do differently if you knew the names of everyone who wanted to buy from you?

Your company is protected now. You’ll always have a pool of buyers waiting to hear from you.

If we can find people who are shopping for what you’ve got, you can also monitor your current client base and be notified when any one of them dips their toes back into the market for another solution that you offer.

Or.. if they start shopping the competition, you’ll be notified. Reducing churn is just as important as acquiring new business.

People-Based Marketing

People-Based Marketing essentially rips the floor out from under Account-Based Marketing.

Sure you’ll want to use the same strategy, but now you go deeper. You get to know the actual individuals who are in-market.. not just the accounts or the companies.

Is Identity Resolution Privacy-Friendly?

Of course, it is. GDPR and CCPA compliant. All data collected is hashed, or anonymized before it’s stored within our identity graph. It would not be possible if it wasn’t 100% compliant.

Is Identity Resolution Right For Me?

Very good question! ..But we don’t know for sure yet. However, there will come a time when you won’t have a choice but to implement it. At that point, though, you will be trailing all of the forward-thinkers in your industry.

You’ll be at a serious disadvantage against rivals already leveraging it.

If you and your company are growth-minded and you’ve already got a sales process that converts.. you will want to jump all over this.

If you’ve got website visitors, you’ve got sales leads.