Lately there’s been a lot of interest from our clients in identity graphs—and a lot of questions have come up since OMI’s data went live on LiveRamp’s Data Marketplace last year. Truthfully, it's a complex subject. Identity graphs are game changing for omni-channel campaigns for many reasons, especially with OMI’s high LiveRamp match rate, but they’re not exactly simple.

 

Recently I collaborated with my colleague Chris Lelles, OMI Senior Account Manager, to develop an FAQ covering identity graphs and match rates—and what they mean for omni-channel campaigns. Here’s a sneak peek at what we came up with:

 

Q: What is an identity graph and how do they work?

A: An identity graph is a collection of known customer or prospect identifiers pulled from data sourced from multiple providers participating in the identity graph. It pulls together online and offline data sets for a full picture of the customer/prospect, making it easy for you to draw from a vast collection of data in a single place.

 

The customer/prospect identifiers can include names, phone numbers, home addresses, personal and business email addresses, usernames, etc. But the identity graph data is anonymized to alleviate privacy concerns. With all the data from multiple sources in one location, an identity graph can give you deep insights into your audience so that you can better personalize, target and measure your omni-channel campaigns.

 

Q: If the data is anonymous, how do you use an identity graph?

A: The audience is taken to a demand-side platform (DSP) of their choice to execute campaigns across devices and social and email accounts.

 

For example, since OMI has partnered with LiveRamp, our 78+ million business contacts are available for segmenting and audience building on the LiveRamp platform. Clients can use the LiveRamp deterministic identity graph to build their audience and then take it to the DSP to fuel their digital campaigns.

 

Q: What does LiveRamp mean when they say they have a deterministic identity graph? What are the advantages?

A: An identity graph uses either probabilistic or deterministic data. A probabilistic identity graph maps data that is likely associated with the right person, while a deterministic graph is based on known identifiers for an exact match. A deterministic graph is more accurate and makes sure you’re not wasting time and resources on duplicate records—especially for omni-channel campaigns. LiveRamp is the largest deterministic identity graph on the open internet.

 

Q: What is the significance of match rates when it comes to identity graphs?

A: An identity graph match rate shows the contact match from a data provider (like OMI) to the graph – contact to contact -- for an overall match. It indicates the percentage of users that an identity graph is able to find in a set of data, letting you know how big of a pool you can draw from when building your audience. At OMI, our match rate to the LiveRamp identity graph is very high at 72%, on average.

 

Q: Practically speaking regarding OMI’s 72% match rate to LiveRamp, what does that mean?

A: That match rate means that 72% of the OMI data file can be leveraged on the LiveRamp platform for digital campaigns. The rest don’t have signals that can be matched, but considering OMI’s 78+ million B2B contacts, and the way that contact data is continually evolving, there are always going to be some contacts with unmatchable signals, or contacts that opt out.

 

So with the 72% match rate, if an OMI customer used an audience file to fuel a digital campaign, such as for display ads, they could make use of the same data and follow it up with an email campaign (or vice versa) to create a “one-two punch” with their message. In addition, the remaining 28% -- the unmatched portion -- can be targeted with email or direct mail.to give OMI customers full use of the entire data set.

 

Q: What are typical match rates?

A: Match rates vary depending on the types of files (personal email address, business email addresses, name and home addresses, etc.), but LiveRamp estimates match rates for most data providers to be around 25-55%.

 

Q: Going back to identity graphs, why are they so important today? And how can the midmarket best take advantage of an identity graph?

A: Buyers today expect a fluid, consistent experience when they’re engaging with your company. It doesn’t matter if it’s email, mobile, social or if they’re on their personal device or a work computer. They expect you to know who they are and they want to receive ads and messages that make sense to them, personally. That’s why omni-channel marketing is so critical.

 

An identity graph enables midmarket marketers and advertisers to easily reach a targeted audience at massive scale, leveraging multiple sources of data, all while adhering to privacy regulations. This is accomplished without regard to the device the audience is using or the channel they’re watching. With an identity graph, an ad can be served to the target’s office desktop, their personal smart phone, their tablet, or their TV.

 

And, because it creates an anonymized digital profile, marketers have no need to track down separate information such as Facebook usernames, email addresses, IP addresses, phone numbers, desktop, etc. All that information is stored securely in the identity graph profile.

 

Lastly, with OMI’s high marketplace match rate, organizations can achieve greater impact and make better use of their time and investment, by launching both email and digital marketing campaigns at the same time. This approach has high crossover and higher overall ROI, with audiences able to view marketing messages on email as well as other channels, such as digital banner ads or social media ads, for true omni-channel marketing. It’s cost-effective, quick and easy to use.

 

Contact us today to learn more about identity graphs and how they are game changers for omni-channel campaigns.

 

 

Outward Media’s proven data cleansing services and targeted, accurate B2B data can enable you to achieve better digital marketing ROI and, ultimately, convert more prospects into customers. Go here to find out about leveraging our SMB and medical market data on the LiveRamp Data Marketplace.