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The Power of Identity Resolution

The Power of Identity Resolution

Oct 29, 2024 | Data Cleansing, GDPR

The Power of Identity Resolution: Ensuring Accurate Customer Data Matching

In the day in age where organisations are striving to be as data-driven as possible, businesses are constantly seeking ways to better understand and engage with their customers. One of the most effective tools in achieving this is identity resolution. This process not only helps in creating accurate customer profiles but also enhances marketing strategies, customer experiences, and regulatory compliance. Let’s dive into why identity resolution is crucial and how it works. 

What is Identity Resolution?

Identity resolution is the process of creating a unified and accurate customer profile by linking data from various touchpoints and systems. This involves integrating information from emails, social media, offline interactions, and more to form a comprehensive view of each customer.

 

Why is Identity Resolution Important?

Accurate Customer Profiles

  • 360-Degree View: Identity resolution helps businesses create a 360-degree view of their customers. By integrating data from multiple sources, companies can gain a holistic understanding of customer behaviours and preferences.
  • Personalisation: With accurate profiles, businesses can tailor their marketing strategies to individual customers, leading to improved engagement and satisfaction.

Improved Marketing Strategies

  • Targeting and Segmentation: Identity resolution allows for better audience segmentation and more precise targeting. This means marketing campaigns can be more effective and yield higher returns.
  • Cross-Channel Consistency: Maintaining a consistent message across various channels is crucial. Identity resolution ensures that customers receive a seamless and coherent experience, regardless of the platform.

Enhanced Customer Experience

  • Seamless Interactions: Customers expect a seamless experience across different touchpoints. Identity resolution ensures that interactions are smooth and consistent, enhancing the overall customer journey.
  • Predictive Analytics: By leveraging accurate customer data, businesses can use predictive analytics to anticipate customer needs and behaviours, further improving the customer experience.

Regulatory Compliance and Security

  • Data Privacy: With increasing data protection regulations, relying on first-party data through identity resolution helps ensure compliance and protects customer privacy.
  • Security Measures: A centralised and accurate customer data system enhances security, reducing the risk of data breaches and ensuring that customer information is safeguarded.

How Does Identity Resolution Work?

Deterministic vs. Probabilistic Matching

  • Deterministic Matching: This method uses exact data points, such as email addresses or phone numbers, to link customer data. It is highly accurate but requires precise and consistent information, which is often not available.
  • Probabilistic Matching: This approach uses statistical algorithms to link data based on probabilities. It can connect data points even when exact matches are not available, which is more often the case.  A good algorithm will recognise different ways the same name or address can be presented enabling matches to be established, even when there are significant differences in the input data for the same individual.

Identity Resolution and Matching within Data Cleanrooms: A New Era of Privacy and Precision

In today’s data-driven world, businesses are constantly seeking ways to leverage customer data to enhance their marketing strategies and improve customer experiences. However, with increasing concerns about privacy and data security, traditional methods of data sharing and analysis are becoming less viable. This is where data cleanrooms come into play.

What are Data Cleanrooms?

Data cleanrooms are secure environments where data can be matched and analysed without exposing the underlying raw PII. These environments ensure that sensitive information remains protected while still allowing for secure matching. Data cleanrooms use advanced encryption and privacy-preserving technologies to maintain data confidentiality.

 

Benefits of Identity Matching within Data Cleanrooms

Enhanced Privacy: By anonymising data and using secure environments, data cleanrooms ensure that privacy is maintained throughout the analysis process.

Better and More Precise Matching: Many organisations face challenges when matching their customer data to other datasets (whether that be other customer data or external third-party sources).  Inconsistently formatted data, missing data and other data related issues can be overcome through employing identity matching solutions, enabling an organisation to match their customer data with confidence, leading to better data-driven outcomes.

Compliance: Data cleanrooms help businesses comply with data protection regulations like GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 by ensuring that data minimisation is built into their data matching solutions and sensitive information is handled securely.

Conclusion

As the digital landscape continues to evolve, the importance of identity resolution will only grow and as privacy concerns continue to increase, data cleanrooms and identity matching offer a robust solution for businesses looking to leverage customer data responsibly.

By combining advanced privacy-preserving technologies with sophisticated matching algorithms (such as our own JetStream solution), businesses can ensure accurate customer data matching, leading to better marketing strategies, enhanced customer experiences, and robust regulatory compliance, while maintaining the highest standards of data security.

 

By Martin Jaggard – Director at The Ark

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Paranormal direct mail activity

Paranormal direct mail activity

Nov 11, 2016 | Comment, National Deceased Register

Some marketers seem determined to make contact with the other side, offering credit cards, discounts and special offers to the deceased.  It would be an incredible achievement on the part of the marketer to get any take up on the campaign from someone who is no longer living, so why do some companies not remove the deceased from their mailing lists?

There is a potential issue of fraud and identity theft here; reports of direct mail being sent to people who have died appear in the media with alarming regularity, and according to a study conducted by Wilmington Millennium with ex-offenders, 79% of these people believed that identity theft was an easy way to obtain cash fraudulently.  Fraudsters intercept credit card offers and similar pieces of direct mail after checking obituaries or graveyard activity, and use these details to open credit accounts and run up a huge bill using the personal details of someone who has died.  This is very distressing to the relatives of the deceased, as they are left to deal with the authorities alongside the bereavement process.

As well as the issue of criminal activity related to these erroneously sent communications, there is also the issue of negative impact on the reputation of a company that continues to mail out to the deceased.  Elderly relatives that lived in a family home will have played a very important part in daily family life, and to be reminded of that loss with every piece of direct mail can be distressing for the family left behind.  Dealing with unsubscribing from these companies’ mailing lists will not be a priority for the family, so the responsibility for managing the removal of the deceased from the mailing lists rests firmly with the marketer.  When you consider that around two thirds of people would not consider dealing with a company that has sent direct mail to a deceased relative, it is even more important to get a removal process in place.

Companies whose products and services are aimed at the elderly have a much greater responsibility than most to get this right, as their database will have a higher proportion of deceased contacts (and goneaways where the elderly person has moved into a residential or nursing home) than most.   Charities are especially susceptible to a high rate of deceased records due to the older average age of their donors, so proactively managing the suppression process and managing final communications can improve the brand image, whilst addressing the need for removing the deceased and goneaways from their databases.  Charities can take the opportunity to pay tribute to a valuable donor; an action that can provide comfort for the relatives in a distressing time and potentially recruit new donors to continue the good work that was funded by the late donor.  It is a sensitive issue, but when managed correctly can lead to more donors, and a positive reinforcement of the brand image.

Using up to date deceased contact lists is not an onerous task and the small effort required to make sure the database is cleansed against this list, far outweighs the potential negatives of leaving people on there that can no longer receive or read mail.  With that in mind, can any organisation really afford to overlook such a simple, yet important component of data hygiene strategy?