Leveraging identity graphs within CDPs for advanced customer marketing | Simon AI

Leveraging identity graphs within CDPs for advanced customer marketing

Author: Emily Denis

Remember cookies? The significant shift affecting enterprise marketing teams is Google’s deprecation of third-party cookies. The question on every marketer’s mind is: how do we create innovative, privacy-compliant, and personalized experiences for every one of our customers without being able to use cookies?

Marketers should lean into zero- and first-party data like never before. Thankfully, martech tools like Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) offer features like identity graphs to help identify anonymous and unauthenticated website visitors without relying on third-party cookies.

Using identity graphs can improve personalization in targeted campaigns and turn unknown website visitors into actionable customer profiles and tangible business opportunities. In this blog post, I'll explain how using identity graphs in a CDP can empower marketers to unlock personalization within their marketing playbook to drive customer engagement.

The importance of identity graphs in customer marketing

An identity graph is a comprehensive database that aggregates various customer identifiers across multiple data sources and touchpoints around what we call a “stable identifier” at Simon Data. An identity graph not just a collection of data interconnected identities. It also helps provide a unified, 360-degree view of each customer in real-time.

The true benefit of an identity graph is its ability to consolidate many pieces of customer data into a coherent whole. Think of it as a puzzle, where each piece represents a different aspect of customer data such as email addresses, social media handles, devices, and behavioral data capturing every click and interaction on the website.

When these pieces come together, they form a complete picture: a Customer 360, the holy grail for marketers looking to engage their audience effectively.

Customer 360s help marketers make sense of a customer’s journey across various touchpoints, contributing to the narrative of that customer’s relationship with a brand. This is why identity graphs, which connect these various dots, can elevate the customer experience, regardless of the channel or device.

Leveraging identity graphs within a CDP

There are numerous benefits to using a CDP with identity graphs within your marketing team. Composable CDPs sit on top of Cloud Data Warehouses (CDW) like Snowflake to access real-time customer data. Identity graphs within CDPs unlock that data’s full potential to drive marketing success.

Identity graphs empower marketers with better personalization

Personalization is crucial for crafting experiences that resonate deeply with customers. Leveraging an identity graph in a CDP ensures that marketers reach the right people across devices, delivering messages and offers tailored to individual preferences.

With identity graphs and Customer 360s, you can craft email campaigns addressing customers by name, referencing their interactions with the website, and recommending products based on past purchases. This creates a conversational rather than transactional engagement.

Another way to leverage identity graphs is through behavioral segmentation, clustering customers based on actions such as purchase history or website engagement. This allows for tailored campaigns that resonate with each group’s specific interests.

Using identifier enrichment to amplify paid media performance

Paid media is expensive and competitive. Marketers leveraging accurate, in-depth data like hashed identifiers in their strategies drive significant impact.

Hashed identifier enrichment is vital for executing paid campaigns — particularly in amplifying paid social audiences. By syncing hashed identifiers for a particular audience, marketers can significantly enhance their reach and improve paid media match rates.

Hashed identifiers act as secure, privacy-compliant ways to match users across platforms without exposing personal information. These identifiers, when used correctly, respect user privacy while allowing marketers to create coherent, cross-platform narratives.

Using identity graphs to de-anonymize unknown website visitors

Anonymous website visitors can be challenging for marketers. However, identifying them can transform them into recognizable individuals. Identity graphs help achieve this by piecing together fragments of data left by visitors.

When integrated with a CDP, these scattered data points coalesce, forming a clearer picture of who these visitors are. For instance, Simon leverages trusted partners’ identity graphs to power Identity+, enabling users to reach more known customers on their website, significantly increasing ROI.

Linking anonymous visitors with hashed identifiers via identity graphs

Identity graphs enable marketers to activate existing customers who are browsing the site but are not logged in. Utilizing a CDP links anonymous visitors with identifiers, empowering marketers to target these audiences with personalized ad campaigns, bridging the gap between unknown visitors and loyal customers.

Conclusion

Using identity graphs within CDPs helps marketers create data-driven, customer-centric strategies that enhance customer experience and overall success. The insights and strategies outlined are not just concepts — they are proven approaches. With identity graphs, marketers can identify and cater to customers, turning every interaction into engagement, loyalty, and growth.

If you’d like to learn more about identity graphs within the Simon CDP, book a demo today.