As technology evolves, people are more inclined to get and replace gadgets regularly. The average person has 2-3 devices they keep connected, changing from one tech piece to another depending on their goal. When users’ journeys are “broken” this way, creating a customer profile and reaching your audience can be tricky. This is where the identity graph comes in, as it can unify that information in one place.

But what exactly is an identity graph, and how do marketers benefit from it? What does the future hold, and how much potential do these tools bring to increase your customer reach? Read this article and learn everything you need about their use.

What Is an Identity Graph?

Identity graphs are tools that help you connect multiple customer identifiers across various devices in use. This creates a cohesive, linear view of the customer’s behavior and preferences, allowing marketers to offer better cross-device advertisements.

With identity graphs, you can unify different data points, phone numbers, device IDs, and email addresses into one client profile. This is done by linking and aggregating data sources using a combination of deterministic and probabilistic matching.

Identity graphs are often mixed with machine learning and artificial intelligence, improving the accuracy of the data and identity resolution. Profiles are updated and refined in real time, ensuring everything is current and up to standard.

How Identity Graphs Are Used Today

Identity graphs are essential for personalized marketing, improving the customer’s experience in the long run and your success as a business. This tool allows you to do the following: 

1.      Connect Customer Identifiers

Your clients will likely interact with several devices every day. They will go through apps, browsers, and even email addresses, where they see or even click on ads, images, and videos. With an identity graph, you should be able to figure out the persistent identifiers among devices, creating one unified profile that can later be used for targeted advertising. 

2.     Analyze Customer Journey

Your customers may give you a variety of intent signals, and not only from the same device. Whenever they click on an ad, do a quick Google search, join a loyalty program, or linger on a product page for a second too long, they are already considering a purchase. By using an identity graph, you can analyze the entire journey of a customer, gaining more insight into patterns and behavior. This makes it easier for you to improve marketing attribution dramatically.

3.     Enjoy Ongoing Updates and Maintenance

The average consumer buys at least one connected household device with their smartphone generally lasting a little over 2 years. This means that your clients may replace their devices often and even change jobs or cities as they move on with their lives. ID graphs allow for smooth maintenance, regularly refreshing the data as the base information remains relevant.

What to Expect from Identity Graphs in the Future

Technological advancements are made daily, to the point where 90 percent of the generated data has been developed only in the past two years. With the world changing, you can expect identity graphs to evolve even more, simplifying the way you connect with your customers. Here are some features you could take advantage of in the future:

·        Real-Time Personalization

Data personalization is becoming faster and faster every day, but it still takes some time until the data is fully processed and delivered. As identity graphs advance, you can expect the data to reach your clients much faster, delivering real-time, dynamic, targeted ads at the perfect moment to convince them.

·        Enhanced Privacy Measures

With security breaches occurring everywhere, around 86 percent of Americans are more concerned with their data privacy than they are with the country’s economy. As the attention is gradually being shifted to this, identity graphs will slowly (but surely) implement stronger consent management and anonymization features.

·        Advanced Technology Integration

Nowadays, every device you use can be integrated with all sorts of technologies. As AI and IoT continue to improve and connect with every portion of the world, identity graphs are expected to follow the same path. This can offer more precise marketing and deeper insights, improving your conversion rates.

How Identity Graphs Benefit the Marketers

Cross-device marketing can significantly improve how you connect to your clients, the tools unifying the relevant pieces of information at one point. For that to happen, you should work with someone specializing in data enrichment and cross-device advertisement. At Froyoo, we use the power of identity graphs to help our clients meet the following goals:

·        Cross-Device Experience Improvement

Whenever a user switches from one device to another, the way they engage with the content can change. For instance, 96.3 percent of the population uses their phones instead of laptops at least once, and 36 percent of shoppers prefer the mobile format to compare prices. Using identity graphs ensures the message reaches your audience at the right time, enhancing conversion rates and user engagement.

·        Comprehensive Insight on Audience

Different users have different searching habits when looking up services online. This can be troublesome for you, as you may advertise the wrong things simply because you drew the data from a single device. Through identity graphs, you can get a 360-degree image of the audience, enjoying an effective advertising campaign with precise targeting.

·        Enrichment of Data

When using different enhanced data enrichment processes and combining them with identity graphs, you can gain much deeper insight into customer data than before. These valuable insights can make the information you gather from your client more relevant and insightful. This way, you should be able to make better decisions regarding your marketing strategy and how you handle your business and products.

The Bottom Line

Considering how technology continues advancing and improving each day, we can expect identity graphs to become a major component in advertising. Used correctly, they can help you create a personalized marketing strategy that can reach every customer, regardless of the device they use.