The Importance of Identity Resolution for Credit Marketing

On average, the typical global consumer owns three or more connected devices.¹ 80% of consumers bounce between devices, while 31% who turned to digital channels for their last purchase used multiple devices along the way.² Considering these trends, many lenders are leveraging multiple channels in addition to direct mail, including email and mobile applications, to maximize their credit marketing efforts. The challenge, however, is effectively engaging consumers without becoming overbearing or inconsistent.

In this article, we explore what identity resolution for credit marketing is and how the right identity tools can enable financial institutions to create more cohesive and personalized customer interactions.

What is identity resolution?

Identity resolution connects unique identifiers across touchpoints to build a unified identity for an individual, household, or business. This requires an identity graph, a proprietary database that collects, stitches, and stores identifiers from digital and offline sources. As a result, organizations can create a persistent, high-definition customer view, allowing for more consistent and meaningful brand experiences.

What are the types of identity resolution?

There are two common approaches to identity resolution: probabilistic ID matching and deterministic ID matching.

• Probabilistic ID matching uses multiple algorithms and data sets to match identity profiles that are most likely the same customer. Data points used in probabilistic models include IP addresses and device types.
• Deterministic ID matching uses first-party data that customers have produced, enabling you to merge new data with customer records and identify matches among existing identifiers. Examples of this type of data include phone numbers and email addresses.

What role does identity resolution play in credit marketing?

Maintaining a comprehensive customer view is crucial to credit marketing — the insights gained allow lenders to determine who they should engage and the type of offer or messaging that would resonate most. But there are many factors that can prevent financial institutions from doing this effectively: poor data quality, consumers bouncing between multiple devices, and so on.

Seven out of 10 consumers find it important that companies they interact with online identify them across visits.

Identity resolution for credit marketing solves these issues by matching and linking customer data from disparate sources back to a single profile. This enables lenders to:

• Create highly targeted campaigns. If your data is incomplete or inaccurate, you may waste your marketing spend by engaging the wrong audience or sending out irrelevant credit offers. An identity resolution solution that leverages expansive, regularly updated data gives you access to high-definition views of individuals, resulting in more personalization and greater campaign engagement.
• Deliver seamless, omnichannel experiences. To further improve your credit marketing efforts, you’ll need to keep up with consumers not only as their needs or preferences change, but also as they move across channels and devices. Instead of creating multiple identity profiles for the same person, identity resolution can recognize an individual across touchpoints, allowing you to create consistent offers and cohesive experiences.

Picking the right marketing identity resolution solution

While the type of identity resolution for marketing solution can vary depending on your business’s goals and challenges, Experian can help you get started. To learn more, visit us today.

^{1 Global number of devices and connections per capita 2018-2023, Statista.}

^{2 Cross Device Marketing – Statistics and Trends, Go-Globe.}