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What Is an Identity Graph?
Understand the Key Benefits of Linking Business Data to Consumer Data
Gone are the days when someone would log in to their family’s shared desktop computer. Now, consumers use one to six devices on any given day. Some consumers even use more. As they use those devices — whether smartphones, laptops, smartwatches, or more — they generate insights and data about who they are and what interests they have. These insights can be leveraged to reach them at the right time with the right message and offering. However, without stitching this information together, you can miss out on valuable details that can help you personalize your marketing campaigns. This is where an identity graph becomes essential.
An identity graph is a single, unified view of prospective customers and existing clients that helps you better understand and engage with your customers. Let’s explore how identity graphs work and why they’re crucial for B2B2C marketing.
How Identity Graphs Aggregate and Connect Data Points
At the heart of effective identity resolution is the ability to aggregate and connect various data points. Identity resolution is the association of digital identifiers at the household and individual level for advertising use cases, including cross-device targeting, post-campaign measurement, and attribution. To create these identity resolutions, you need an identity graph.
An identity graph links customer identifiers to a single profile to show how user accounts are connected. It maps out how customers interact with your products, services, or website, creating a holistic view of their behavior and preferences. These interactions can occur across customer relationship management (CRM) systems, eCommerce platforms, email marketing tools, and even advertising networks.
For instance, a customer may browse a product on their phone, read a product review on their tablet, and eventually make a purchase on their laptop. Without an identity graph, these interactions might be seen as separate events, leading to fragmented customer profiles. However, by using a customer identity graph, you can see how these touchpoints are connected, painting an image of the full customer journey from start to finish. This enables you to deliver highly targeted messages based on where they are on the customer buyer journey and track performance across devices and channels.
No matter what type of business you operate within, you most likely have the same customers across your CRM, eCommerce software, ad platform, and email marketing tool. An identity graph will help with deterministic matching, identifying the same user across different devices — ultimately, collecting and processing the data from all those tools and linking them into one customer profile. This eliminates guesswork and provides you with actionable insights to make informed decisions about your marketing strategy and overall business goals.
Challenges in Data Management
While B2B2C data is critical for effective marketing, it’s often hard to come by if you’re not using the right data management tools. Here are the top data-specific challenges B2B2C marketers must overcome:
Targeting: Identity graphs improve your targeting capabilities by connecting multiple data points. However, if the identity data isn’t properly managed, targeting can become less precise and, therefore, less usable. Poorly integrated data can lead to irrelevant ads or misaligned content.
Personalization: The goal of any identity graph is to deliver personalized experiences to your audience. Inaccurate or incomplete data can compromise your ability to craft meaningful engagements. Personalization is only as good as the data behind it.
Data security and privacy: As your business handles increasingly sensitive personal information, security and compliance with increasing privacy and data protection laws and regulations may become a concern. With state-wide privacy regulations like the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) or the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in place, ensuring your identity resolution processes comply with your area’s laws. or the laws in place where the people you want to reach are located, is paramount.
Scalability and flexibility: As your business grows, so does your data need. Ensuring a customer identity graph can scale with your business while maintaining flexibility across various platforms is crucial for long-term success.
Performance measurement: Measuring the performance of cross-channel campaigns becomes much easier with identity graphs. However, you must also ensure that you have a way to measure success.
How Is B2B2C Data Unique?
WB2B2C data blends elements from both business and consumer data sources, creating an interconnected view of your audience. B2B2C data provides insights from both intermediary businesses and end consumers into a single profile. With this information, you can personalize messaging at multiple levels.
For example, a CMO at a company that sells home appliances through retailers — B2B — might need to offer personalized training to retail sales staff while simultaneously marketing messages to consumers based on their purchasing behavior — B2C. This approach requires a deeper integration of first- and third-party data with consumer identity data to deliver messaging at both ends of the chain.
B2B2C Data Integration: The Importance of Knowing Your Target
Having a complete view of your customers is essential for driving successful marketing campaigns. This is especially true for CMOs and demand generation leaders in any industry. Identity graphs help empower businesses to integrate B2B and B2C data, giving a 360-degree view of each customer. This holistic approach enables you to tailor each interaction more effectively, helping to ensure you reach the right audience at the right time.
Here are examples of how identity graphs can help in different industries:
For retail marketing leaders, identity graphs can connect customer data from in-store purchases, mobile apps, and online interactions. Imagine a customer browses shoes on their phone, adds them to their cart on a desktop but completes the purchase in-store. Without an identity graph, these activities would remain fragmented.
With holistic B2B2C data, you can tie these behaviors together and deliver customized offers, like sending a mobile notification with a discount on matching accessories when the customer visits the website again. This creates a seamless omnichannel experience, helping to increase conversion rates and fostering customer loyalty.
Trust and personalized experiences are key in financial services, and an identity graph allows demand gen leaders to connect customer interactions across various platforms, including banking apps, email, and in-branch visits. For instance, a customer might explore loan options on your website, visit a branch for more information, and then finalize their loan application online.
By integrating B2B and B2C data through an identity graph database, marketing leaders can create email campaigns offering tailored loan products or advice based on an individual customer's financial profile. This improves lead nurturing and sets up customers for success.
Healthcare marketers can use identity graphs to help create secure patient experiences. Let’s say an existing patient researches symptoms on your website, schedules an appointment through a mobile app, and later visits a clinic. By connecting these touchpoints into one profile, healthcare organizations can follow up with relevant content, like appointment reminders or personalized medical advice — while aligning with data security obligations and compliance with privacy regulations.
Identity data can also help tailor marketing for healthcare providers, making it easier to send targeted outreach based on patient needs and behavior.
In B2B SaaS, where demand generation is often focused on building relationships and nurturing leads over time, identity graphs can link data from a prospect’s interactions with webinars, product demos, and email campaigns. A CMO can track how a lead engages with various touchpoints, from downloading a white paper to attending a virtual event, and use this information to create email follow-ups or retargeting ads that will hit the mark. This can improve sales funnel efficiency by focusing on leads with the highest intent, ultimately boosting conversion rates.
For the automotive industry, identity graphs can merge data from various customer interactions, like researching vehicles online, requesting test drives, or using mobile apps for service scheduling. A marketer in automotive could leverage this B2B2C approach to track how consumers engage across digital and physical touchpoints.
If a prospect configures a car online and later visits a dealership, the marketer can use this data to send personalized promotional content or maintenance reminders after purchase. This not only enhances the customer lifecycle but can drive repeat business.
Because technology and electronics are constantly evolving, marketing leaders can utilize identity graphs to combine customer interactions from eCommerce, social media, and support channels to keep up with demand and preferences. For example, if a customer interacts with your support team about a specific product feature and then engages with an email campaign promoting accessories, the identity graph could connect these interactions.
This allows demand generation leaders to deliver relevant product recommendations and cross-sell opportunities based on actual customer behavior.
The Benefits of Identity Graphs
Ultimately, an identity graph database is designed to create a single view of your audience, giving you actionable insights to deliver:
Personalized customer experiences that help increase engagement and conversions
Improved data quality by consolidating fragmented data
Aligning with enhanced data security obligations, helping to ensure compliance with privacy regulations
Accessible data across your marketing, sales, and service teams for streamlined collaboration
Cost optimization by reducing redundancies and improving marketing ROI
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The information provided in articles are suggestions only and based on best practices. Dun & Bradstreet is not liable for the outcome or results of specific programs or tactics undertaken based on your use of the information. Please contact an attorney or financial/tax professional if you are in need of legal or financial/tax advice.
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