The Rise of the Platform Marketer: Performance Marketing with Google, Facebook, and Twitter, Plus the Latest High-Growth Digital Advertising Platforms

Chapter 4Identity Management

Special Contributor: Matthew Mobley

A key technology enablement competency for the Platform Marketer, which will unlock the value that can be driven through customer strategy, marketing measurement, and individualized consumer experiences, is identity management. It is a competency that has become increasingly complex with the explosion of digital media and channels. It has also become more polarizing for marketers and privacy advocates, as marketers drive toward more personalized interactions with their customers and prospects. For the marketer striving to develop an understanding of all the signals that indicate that the same individual is interacting with the brand, the reality is that—in terms of identity management—the ability to distinguish between John Smith and John Doe is less important than understanding the unique qualities of that individual. This statement, of course, is not to diminish the value of knowing it is Doe versus Smith. Knowing this difference allows marketers to associate the valuable data contained in traditional offline CRM data stores and maximize ongoing, loyal relationships with individual customers. But in the end, identity management is about defining uniqueness and associating experiences and characteristics to this defined uniqueness.

The Anatomy of Identity

The composition of an identity can be placed on a continuum where one end is the anonymous state and the other end is the known state. In the anonymous state, ...