07 Sep 2022
6 min read

Identity Resolution: The Rockerbox Guide to Transparent Attribution

Rockerbox - Hillary Walters Written by Hillary Walters
on September 07, 2022

As a digital marketer, you might have already noticed how busy the modern consumer can be. We don’t simply mean how much is on your ideal buyer’s calendar (although that can and sometimes does impact buying behaviors). 

Modern customers are more active in digital channels, across multiple devices, and throughout separate platforms than ever before.

Companies are competing for attention just as much as they are for a new sale or conversion. This means that without knowing where and who your customers really are, businesses are missing the tools required to correctly identify consumers and leverage or nurture those relationships.

Fortunately, you don’t have to fly blind when it comes to gaining a complete and full-circle understanding of your customers. Identity resolution is the master key to identifying, attributing, and marketing with more precision.

What is Identity Resolution? 

Identity resolution is the process of connecting separate customer behaviors and activities into one cohesive profile using specific data points. 

Online “window shopping” has made it slightly more difficult to understand who your interested customers are, what they’re looking for, and even where (or on what devices) they’re searching from. Identity resolution is a strategy that removes the layer of anonymity so that you can connect separate actions into one streamlined customer profile.

Current spending also shows that identity research is here to stay. According to a Winterberry Group forecast, spending on identity resolution solutions is projected to exceed $2.6 billion by 2022 and beyond.

Common Issues and Roadblocks for Identity Resolution

Identifying your audience is entirely possible with a platform like Rockerbox, which seamlessly connects customer touchpoints to help you visualize an accurate, data-based path to conversion. 

Even though that’s the case, understanding the hurdles and challenges that are at play can help your team create better identity resolution strategies.

Businesses that want to scale their marketing efforts must be mindful to tackle the following “red flag” areas in the customer conversion process.  

  • Number of household devices – According to Statista, the average American household has up to 10 connected devices at a given time. Browsing, researching, and interacting with marketing materials can take place on any of these devices, at any time of day. Pinpointing which users are looking for specific information is crucial for successful identity resolution. 
  • Ongoing data privacy changes – Consumer data usage is a constantly shifting landscape that businesses must stay aware of. Some states have enacted specific legislation that governs the collection and disposal of consumer data. These laws, such as the CCPA in California, may also extend to any connected device that collects or uses consumer data for general marketing purposes.

Why Digital Marketers Need Identity Resolution

Marketers need identity resolution so that they can pinpoint, target, and personalize the customer journey for busy buyers. In the digital age, a one-size-fits-all approach simply doesn’t work or capture the level of buyer interest that’s needed to sell, grow, and scale.

For effective marketers, the potential of identifying buyers with precision should be exciting and non-negotiable. 

Here’s a peek at what identity resolution can do.

Remove Anonymization 

Anonymous visitors likely make up a significant portion of your brand or website traffic. And while it’s not a problem to have visitors who browse, you need a clear way to interpret that activity if you want to see conversion success. Identity resolution connects anonymous browsing activity to a single targeted user, so that your marketing team can deliver messaging that resonates.

Build Enhanced Buyer Profiles

In a highly condensed and competitive market, it’s not enough to know that a potential buyer is mildly interested in making a future purchase. Identity resolution helps to construct robust buyer profiles with enhanced data insights. The result is more granular marketing campaigns aimed at what people are really looking for.

Create Real-Time Responses for Greater Impact

Identity resolution (when done correctly) should also trigger or activate customer interactions based on real-time data. This ensures that you’re capturing buyer interest in the moment, based on what the customer is actively searching for. Marketers rely on accurate, real-time data to deliver valuable incentives, offers, and messaging. 

How Rockerbox Handles Identity Resolution

Rockerbox enables administrators the ability to customize the order in which a customer’s identity is resolved. Having a customized order for your business’s identity resolution process ensures that the highest proportion of user touch points are connected across all user devices.

This is particularly true as you market to an increasing number of customers, and in more ways, than ever before. From direct mail, to television, to mobile advertising, to OTT, you can start to deliver the right messages across more channels and devices than ever before.

First-Party Identifiers

Your identity waterfall begins with simple identifying components such as name, email address, phone number, and the internal customer ID that you assign to each new site visitor or buyer. At the most basic level, these data points help you build a foundational profile that you can continue to add more details to later.  

Secondary Identifiers

Secondary identifiers include data points such as the user’s IP address, device type, and household IDs. These identifiers contribute to a more robust profile in which users interact with different platforms at unique times of the day based on habit, preference, or activity. 

Probabilistic

As part of the customized ordering for your business processes, Rockerbox leverages probabilistic and deterministic cross-device data that’s powered by third parties or Rockerbox. Deterministic data includes things like impressions, clicks, conversions, and post-log reports. On the other hand, probabilistic data may include:

  • Promo codes
  • Post-purchase surveys
  • IP matching
  • Vanity URLs
  • Synthetic events
  • Cross-device mapping

In the case of probabilistic data, probability is used to identify users. Both types of data are important to constructing an identity resolution strategy that tangibly works.

Cookie Identifiers

Rockerbox also implements cookie identifiers that are based on Rockerbox’s first party CNAME (custom tracking domains) integration. Using this option, pixels are loaded from a business’s website instead of from the Rockerbox domain. Rockerbox also leverages other third-party identifiers from selected technology partners.

Improve Your Return with Accurate Identities

Not only does identity resolution produce a more well-rounded and personalized experience for your target audience, it also helps organizations improve the overall marketing return on investment (ROI). The reason for this is based on the simple idea that when businesses know more in-depth information about the customer, they can produce accurate campaigns that deliver the messages, incentives, and results that the consumer expects.

Clearly, there is a cost-saving advantage to this approach. When businesses remove the guesswork from a selected audience, it’s easier than ever to spend the right marketing dollars in all the right places. 

This means less experimentation, more savings in terms of time and resources, and better results all around.  

Understand Your Customers with Rockerbox

If you’re still struggling to connect the dots and identify the right customers for your business, service, or product, Rockerbox has the insights you need. Resolve your site visitors’ identity, and see how your customer conversion potential accelerates.

By having a strategic, transparent, and customizable model in place, you can achieve better resolution today. Revamp your marketing with personalized approaches that are based on real-time marketing attribution data. 

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