What is Identity Linking and How It Can Help B2B Sales

In this omnichannel, cross-platform world it is now relevant, though arduous, to send the right message to the right person at the right time. Identity linking helps marketers to stitch together pieces of sufficient customer data from multiple touchpoints and channels to understand their prospects better and drive sales efficiency. In this article, we will talk about identity linking and how it can help improve your B2B sales.

People-based marketing is the holy grail of today’s marketing ecosystem, where you need to engage, nurture, and pursue prospects across multiple channels and platforms. While Identity ResolutionOpens a new window helps you identify a customer across touchpoints, Identity Linking helps you link and integrate the multiple identities of a unique customer to create one rich and addressable customer profile.

What is Identity Linking?

Identity linking is the probabilistic linking of customer behavior and purchase data (offline or online) to create an omnichannel view. It is used to effectively engage prospects and customers and deliver a precise message at the right time.

Identity ResolutionOpens a new window enables a better customer experience by connecting related fragments of a customer’s journey from multiple touchpoints.

Identity Linking, on the other hand, can link multiple customer identities from social profiles, phone number(s), emails, browser cookies, mobile device ids, IP addresses, etc. with a unique identity key.

The unique customer identity key is consistent and persistent, which can help you track the customer’s actions across systems and channels, glean actionable insights to build a holistic profile, and interact with them through relevant and targeted messages.

Also Read: Why The Key to People-Based Marketing is IdentityOpens a new window

How Can Identity Linking Help Drive B2B Sales?

B2C marketing and sales professionals have abundant data to reach prospects and customers across many touchpoints.

B2B professionals, on the other hand, face a challenge with low match rates between B2B contact information and their digital marketing ecosystem, which prevents them from reaching out to a quality audience with accurate messages at scale. To be able to deliver a compelling message, you need to identify your target account, the individual (decision maker) you need to deliver the message to and how she fits into the organization.

Identity linking can help you do just that, making your targeting more accurate, for greater conversions.

Also Read: 5 Smart Ways to Capture B2B Customer DataOpens a new window

What are the Challenges Faced by B2B Brands?

There is a copious amount of information available (behavioral, contextual, content consumption, event engagements, etc.) in the online world, but B2B organizations find it challenging to interpret it in a meaningful way because:

• It is difficult to gather information from disparate sources
• A large part of B2B interactions are online and anonymous
• Of the plethora of marketing/sales messages being sent to the same prospect/customer
   

Role of Identity Linking

Once you have a customers’ identityOpens a new window in place, you can link that customer’s data and behavior to your sales objectives. Integrating customer identifiers across channels and devices can help you create a single customer view by bringing together behavioral, transactional, and contextual information.

With identity linking you can segment and prioritize your target audience.

• You can reach business prospects across their favorite social and consumer platforms, major publications and news sites, or websites targeting specific interests – making outreach scalable, relevant, and targeted.
• Linking individuals to a universal identifier will help you connect them to your target account, and help you track account activity (even with different individuals or multiple interactions). This can help you cut down on the frequency (especially of repeat messages) and pick up the conversation from the last interaction.
   

Essentially, you can now make a sales pitch tailored to the individual you are interacting with.

• Identity linking can help you better execute personalization and lead conversion tactics, helping you close sales faster.
• Data management and governance become easier making your sales process efficient.
• Identity linking helps you track your campaign performance and the type of messages that work for an individual or a specific account, improving efficiency.
   

Also Read: Why B2B Marketers Look to Multi-Touch Attribution to Drive Qualified LeadsOpens a new window

Conclusion

Identity linking can enrich customer experience and personalize sales processes, by enabling accurate targeting, relevant personalization, and device- or channel-appropriate interactions. It helps you execute people-based targeting by creating a complete customer view and enhancing lead nurturing and scoring to drive sales efficiency.

Have you implemented identity linking for your sales efforts? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

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