This is an excerpt from our latest ebook, How Contextual Identity Resolution Can Drive Revenue in Travel & Hospitality. Access your copy here.
In the quest for effective identity resolution, travel and hospitality marketers must carefully navigate the landscape of potential partners. While acquiring first-party data through form fills and other organic methods is possible, gaps will inevitably persist. This is where identity resolution partners come into play, making it their mission to truly understand individuals. Think: quality over quantity.
Many marketers assume that the identity partner that can identify the most amount of devices is the best partner to help you drive revenue. This is not always true. Identity resolution partners use a term called “identity match rate” which details the number of devices an ID resolution partner can match to an email or mobile number. That number may be high and marketers can fall into the trap of thinking more devices = more revenue to be earned from them, however, that’s not always the case.
Identity Match Rate: The percentage of site visits identified down to an email address prior to a conversion.
Although the number of devices is part of the equation, simply identifying a device may not be as impactful as knowing what motivates the consumer attached to that device. For example, a match rate with one identity partner for a travel brand may reach as high as 40%. In this scenario, the identity partner may recognize 40% of the brand’s anonymous traffic visiting their website or app. And yes, the higher the match rate, the higher the chances are of connecting with that potential traveler in both owned and paid channels. However, knowing what that individual actually cares about and what will persuade them to convert is more meaningful than simply being able to remarket to them. It’s the context that is more important than simply connection. Brands must balance match rates with the amount of context an identity partner can provide. This means identity partners are not all built equally.
Look for a partner who can provide a good match rate + context
Marketers who have had positive experiences with identity resolution solutions know that identifying a device plus adding context provides a more meaningful outcome. We call this contextual identity resolution. Partners that have vast and proprietary datasets can deliver much more context to a client than simply identifying a device. That includes knowing which email address for a given individual is best to win that conversion when sending email offers.
Think of how an identity resolution partner could provide context on a device that has been transacting with multiple different brands or web publishers in previous months – from here, with this data, you can create more impactful triggered email or text offers that align more with their purchase behavior and have a far higher conversion rate.
For example, let’s say an identity resolution partner identifies a consumer named Mark on a hotel’s website. With historical data such as past browsing and transactional data they have on Mark’s device and habits, across potentially thousands of other websites, they could understand whether Mark converts easily or needs more encouragement. Let’s say Mark typically signs up to join an email list without a discount or other costly incentive – the identity resolution partner knows this and serves up an optimized and personalized email opt-in offer to Mark without eroding margin and dangling discounts. Mark converts and now he’s on the brand’s own marketing list and in their database.
Going even further, if an identified device is known to spend more money with ecommerce businesses than the average consumer’s basket size, then that context can inform an email or text offer that has a higher margin for the brand, rather than simply discounting to win a quick sale.
Context + historical data drive new revenue
Again, context on the person behind that visiting device is key. Brands don’t have any information on a net-new site visitor, and have limited info on the known contacts that browse their site. It’s this rich historical context that the right identity resolution partner has that is far more impactful for driving new revenue. It’s not enough to simply match a device to an email or mobile number. When a brand has this context, their owned channel messages can be far more personal and will lead to higher conversion rates, all while reducing the reliance on paid remarketing ads. This means hotel and travel brands can be more strategic using data from their identity resolution partner to send higher quality messages at the right time, in the right channel, to the right person using the right email or mobile number. This is why quality will always beat quantity in identity resolution – and the quality and quantity of contextualized data your identity resolution partner has available quickly outweighs a simple high-level metric of identity match rate.
Gain a full understanding of contextual identity resolution and how it works within the travel and hospitality industry in our latest ebook.