Technology is always marching forward, and once again, a new leap is advancing consumer insights. Marketers are increasingly able to tie together fragmented data customer points across the digital footprint and execute highly targeted campaigns–and, without compromising privacy.

It’s called identity graphing and it’s a powerful tool for connecting the dots between all the different buckets of consumer data. To get a better sense of how it provides marketers with an integrated view of consumers’ digital identities, let’s look at some of its most impactful and practical applications. 

Why Identity Graphing Matters in Marketing

Today’s consumer interacts with brands through numerous touchpoints, both online and offline. They leave digital footprints across devices and channels, making it difficult for marketers to see the big picture of their interactions. Getting a unified view and making strategic choices comes down to the ability to create a cohesive picture from scattered identifiers like IP addresses, cookies, and device IDs.

B2E’s identity graph solution, MotusAudiences Connect, is powered by the comprehensive Experian database. It offers businesses access to information with incredible reach and scale, to the tune of more than 2.75 billion IDs across 250 million individuals and 126 million households. 

MotusAudiences Connect bridges the gaps marketers previously faced by “resolving” digital identities into a single picture, allowing brands to:

• Enhance targeting precision by crafting personalized campaigns that align with audience behaviors and preferences.
• Improve campaign efficiency by ensuring that marketing messages reach the right individuals, reducing wasted ad spend caused by broad, ineffective targeting.
• Strengthen measurement and attribution by tracking engagement more effectively, attributing conversions to the right campaigns. This helps marketers refine their strategies for even better future outcomes.

Balancing Personalization and Privacy

The data privacy landscape is growing more complicated for marketers who must balance consumers’ often contradictory feelings about data privacy and personalization—along with an evolving set of laws that can vary from state to state. To navigate identity graphing responsibly, a privacy-first approach incorporates several key practices. 

• Using hashed identifiers: Converting personally identifiable information (PII) into anonymized formats helps preserve both security and privacy while still enabling precise targeting.
• Complying with data protection frameworks: Adhering to frameworks such as SOC 2 standards and the California Consumer Protection Act helps maintain industry standard data practices and compliance. 
• Using trust-based principles. It’s important to use an identity graph partner that takes extensive measures to protect the confidentiality and security of consumer data. They should adhere to a values-based approach to data processing that upholds transparency, user consent, and the protection of personally identifiable information.

Using Identity Graphing in Marketing Strategies

It’s growing more difficult for marketers to track and understand customer behavior without an identity resolution strategy. There are so many dots to connect across consumer interactions such as email, social media, mobile apps, in-store visits, and connected devices—and consumers today expect brands to have a sophisticated picture of their behaviors and expectations.

With a more accurate and dynamic view of an audience, marketers can leverage it in a number of impactful ways: 

• Segmentation and customization. Create audience segments based on demographic and behavioral attributes and design more relevant messaging.
• Precise audience expansion. Enrich customer data sets with new IDs for increased reach and scale, while still targeting the appropriate audience members with precision.
• Omnichannel campaigns: Deliver a more seamless experience across email, social media, and digital advertising, improving both engagement and brand consistency.
• Data-driven decisions. Identity-linked campaigns provide more actionable insights enabling marketers to map the customer journey and gain a clearer understanding of what drives conversions.

Use Case: Marketing Agency Serving Multi-Location Companies

To help further illustrate the potential for identity graphing, let’s look at the example of a marketing agency with a heating and cooling business client with business locations across multiple states. The agency’s challenge is to deliver hyper-targeted digital ads for each business location, ensuring the ads reach local homeowners who are most likely to need home services. So, how can they laser target the appropriate targets in every market?

Anonymized customer data from the heating and cooling company can be run through MotusAudiences Connect to be augmented with additional details such as demographic profile, income level, and purchase habits and preferences. This builds a more complete and accurate picture of the home services company’s ideal customer segments.

This information can then be used to create location-specific “lookalike audiences,” to ensure ads target homeowners who fit the ideal profiles. For example, for target customers in older neighborhoods, ads may focus on urgent repair services. Middle-income areas and certain demographics might receive messages about affordable maintenance plans and seasonal promotions. Ads directed at target audiences with more disposable income might emphasize premium service offerings and energy-efficient upgrades.

Embracing Identity Graphing Techniques

The digital landscape is always expanding, but it still remains a largely disjointed arena. Identity graphing offers a way for businesses to synthesize all the different data points and stay more closely in tune with customers. It provides a major competitive advantage to any businesses interested in staying a step ahead. 

With an assist from identity graphing, it’s more obvious how to anticipate customer needs, deliver the right message at the perfect moment, and maximize the impact of every campaign. Could you do more with identity-driven insights? For more detailed information about B2E’s identity graphing solution MotusAudiences Connect, schedule a meeting with us! 

When it comes to marketing campaigns that are able to fuel business growth, clean and accurate data is the foundation success is built upon. New technologies combined with rapidly shifting consumer behaviors mean marketers must go beyond basic data hygiene practices to stay on top of keeping data fresh and functional.

Today’s consumers are far more discerning. The information you have about them must be accurate and relevant, paving the way for well-targeted and personalized marketing communications to engage them. Yet, recent studies show that more than half the data used for ad targeting is wrong.

Dirty data not only stands in the way of effective personalization, but the negative impact is amplified across wasted resources, missed opportunities, and decreased ROI. Good, solid data should be every marketer’s immediate priority.

Why Clean Data Matters More Than Ever

Several current trends highlight the growing importance of clean and accurate data.

AI and Machine Learning: Advancing technologies rely heavily on high-quality data to deliver accurate insights and predictions. Clean data ensures that these technologies can function optimally and provide valuable customer insights.

Personalization at Scale: Consumers expect highly personalized experiences. Clean data enables marketers to create detailed customer profiles, segment audiences effectively, and deliver tailored content that resonates with individual preferences and behaviors.

Omni-Channel Marketing: With consumers engaging with brands across digital and in-person channels, consistent and accurate data is essential for creating cohesive and seamless experiences. Good data allows for effective cross-channel tracking and integration, ensuring that marketing messages are consistent and relevant across all touchpoints.

Enhanced Customer Experience (CX): The most successful brands and businesses know customer experience is a key differentiator. Accurate data helps marketers understand customer needs, preferences, and pain points, and create more meaningful and engaging experiences.

Data Privacy and Security: As data privacy concerns grow, maintaining data properly is critical for building trust with consumers. It ensures that personal information is handled responsibly, maintaining customer confidence and the credibility of your brand.

Advanced Strategies to Keep Data Fresh and Valuable

In a data-driven landscape, marketers must elevate their data management strategies beyond basic hygiene to unlock the full potential of their customer insights. By implementing advanced data cleaning, enrichment, and governance practices, organizations can create a robust foundation for accurate, actionable, and customer-centric marketing campaigns. This can include: 

• Automated data cleaning tools that detect and correct errors, remove duplicates, and update outdated information in near real-time.
• Data enrichment from top-tier data sources that fill gaps, improve accuracy, and create a more comprehensive view of your customers. At B2E, we use Experian data, one of the most expansive datasets available, which has also been top-ranked for data accuracy.
• Regular data audits and monitoring to identify and rectify issues promptly. Without continuous attention, data accumulates errors and degrades significantly over time. 
• Data governance policies that define data standards, roles, and responsibilities. This will help maintain data quality and integrity across the organization.
• Breaking down data silos by integrating data across different systems and departments. A unified data infrastructure ensures everyone has access to the same accurate and consistent information for decision-making.
  
  

The path to marketing excellence is paved with clean and accurate data. As emerging trends and technologies are increasingly data-powered, quality becomes more paramount. With sound data management, marketers can unlock the full potential of their data and drive more effective campaigns. 

Do you need access to superior quality data, or help maintaining data integrity? Reach out to schedule a free consultation and learn more about how B2E can help!