This guide provides actionable strategies for how your business can achieve a single customer view to better understand your audience and build meaningful, identity-driven customer relationships.

1. Achieving a Single Customer View:
The Holy Grail for Marketers

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Achieving a Single Customer View:
The Holy Grail for Marketers
How to Put Customer Identity at the Center of
Your Marketing Strategy
The Data Deluge
The IDC says that consumers created 1.8 zettabytes of information in 2011 –
that’s 56.5 billion 32GB iPads’ worth of data - and that the world’s information
has more than tripled since then. To put it in perspective, that’s enough
iPads to build a wall taller and wider than the Great Wall of China!
This volume of data comes from more than a handful of sources and channels,
including social networks, mobile apps, search engines, content platforms,
emails, videos, text messages and more. And the data deluge won’t be
slowing down anytime soon – the IDC predicts that data will increase
10-fold by 2020.
A Brief History
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt once argued that 5 exabytes of data were
created between the dawn of civilization and 2003 — and that this amount of
information is now created every 2 days.

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Oh, The Irony!
Every single data point is an opportunity to connect with your customers in
more meaningful ways, and managing today’s volume and variety of data
effectively is an imperative for businesses to meet customer expectations.
Businesses are trying to collect as much data as they can in attempt to learn
more about their customers. But while data has the power to help you develop
more personal customer relationships and relevant user experiences, if it is
not collected and managed properly, it can lead to a totally disorganized and
inaccurate view of your customers.
The 2.5 Quintillion Byte Question
With more than 2.5 quintillion bytes of data being created across channels
and devices each day, businesses are struggling to get a single view of
their customers - there’s just too much data to process and make sense of.
According to a recent Experian survey, while 99% of businesses believe a
single customer view is important to their business, only 24% claim to have
a clear understanding of their customers across channels.
The Big Benefits of Big Data
• 73% of consumers prefer to do business with brands that use personal information
to make their shopping experiences more relevant (Digital Trends)
• A retailer using big data to its full potential can increase its operating margin by
more than 60% (McKinsey)
• More than two-thirds of business execs believe they could lose their market
position in the next 1-3 years if they don’t adopt big data strategies (Accenture)

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So how can your business manage big data in a way that effectively gives
you a single, complete view of your customers that leads to meaningful
interactions and relationships?
This guide takes a comprehensive look at how your business can develop
a more effective strategy to understand your audience and drive value for
your brand and customers by:
• Identifying your customers
• Managing customer identity data
• Integrating and applying data across marketing campaigns
Finally, we’ll take a look at how marketers can leverage this “holy grail”
to improve user experiences and drive business success.
Identifying Your Customers
“You’ve Got Mail”
Remember the days of AOL? The Internet was a largely uncharted,
somewhat daunting landscape driven by user anonymity. You went online
to escape yourself, not to be yourself.
But with modern consumers publicly sharing information about their
relationships, hobbies, locations, desired products and plans for the
weekend via mobile apps, social networks, blogs and more, their real
identities have become intertwined with their “virtual lives.”

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Online Anonymity is Dead
As more interactions move to the digital realm, customers are demanding
increasingly personal, real-world experiences across digital channels
and devices.
Take your local Starbucks, for example. If you’re a frequent customer, the
baristas will greet you by name, start making your favorite drink before you
can even order, and ask about your two kids. They know you.
This is the type of relationship-driven experience today’s consumers expect
businesses to bring to the online world:
• 40% of consumers buy more from retailers who personalize the shopping
experience across channels (Monetate)
• 79% agree that their relationships with brands are more personal than ever
before (Latitude)
• After receiving irrelevant information or products from a brand, 43%
ignored future communications from the company, while 20% stopped
buying from it altogether (Gigya)
Consumers have made it clear that customization and personalization are
here to stay, but to get there, businesses need to understand the wants and
needs of their customers.

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Missing the Mark
Online anonymity is dead - and that’s a good thing. But in attempt to combat
unknown users and give customers the “Starbucks experience,” too many
brands are still using prehistoric third-party data techniques that cross
the line.
Not only is being unknowingly “cookied” and tracked across the Internet
creepy, but third-party cookies do little to tell you who your customers really
are, merely providing a peek at device-specific browser history that may or
may not belong to a known user. What’s more, data brokers often combine
cookie data with unauthorized offline data such as purchase history, credit
reports, medical records and more in attempt to build out “complete”
consumer profiles.
Focusing on First-Party Data
To truly understand their customers, forge genuine relationships and create
relevant cross-channel experiences, leading brands are turning to first-party
data. First-party data can be captured using a variety of techniques, including
email subscriptions, purchase forms, site analytics and more.
Because it comes directly from your customers, first-party data promotes
transparent data collection and consumer privacy, and is more accurate than
insights that have been bought and sold by third-party vendors.
Crumbling the Third-Party Cookie
According to Steve’s third-party data profile, Steve is a 32-year-old male. He has
been browsing briefcases on high-end retail sites over the past several weeks, and
frequently reads New York Times. However, were marketers to try to reach Steve
with information about a tuxedo sale or a subscription to Harvard Business Review,
they wouldn’t have much success. Steve’s real identity is a stay-at-home dad, and
his business professional wife likes to borrow his laptop!

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Leveraging Customer Identity
One of the most common ways to collect first-party data is via user
registration and login. Prompting site visitors to register for and log in to
your site or app gives them the opportunity to self-identify and share select
information about themselves directly with your brand.
Capturing consumer identity is a major stepping stone to achieving a single
customer view because your customers carry this identity with them as they
move across your web properties, enabling you to tie all cross-channel
activity and insights to a single, fully developed user profile.
To accomplish this, businesses must adopt a flexible registration system that
enables them to easily build and deploy custom registration forms and flows,
with security, privacy compliance and responsive design built in.

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Social Login as a Solution
In addition to traditional sign-in, your registration solution should also
support social login. Social login reduces barrier to site entry by allowing
visitors to authenticate their identities using an existing social network
or pre-validated user account. It is particularly convenient across mobile
devices as consumers are often already logged in to their social network(s)
of choice, making registration a seamless, two-click experience.
According to a recent Gigya survey, 66% of US and 59% of UK consumers
say they use social login “always” or often” when given the option, while
over 60% of respondents from both US and UK regions say they are likely to
choose social login when using mobile devices.
When customers log in socially to your site or app, they can also grant
your brand permission-based access to specific data points housed within
their social profiles, such as their relationships, interests, and activities. This
information is extremely powerful when it comes to creating more personal,
relevant user experiences.

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Registration Done Right
The below registration page serves as a prime example of the elements
needed to encourage unknown site visitors to identify themselves as known
customers.
1. Gives visitors the option of both social and traditional sign-in.
2. Provides multiple social login options.
3. Clearly lists the benefits of becoming a registered user.
4. Specifically states the data points being collected, and doesn’t ask for too
much information at once.
5. Lets users know upfront that their data is protected.
6. Incorporates custom opt-in fields.
1
5
6
4
2
3

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Account Linking and SSO
Giving users options when it comes to registration and login makes it
necessary to choose a registration software that is able to automatically
link multiple user accounts to a single profile.
Single sign-on (SSO) is another tactic to facilitate a single customer view
while providing a streamlined user experience. As web-based services
and applications multiply, SSO allows users to move seamlessly across
properties by tying all activity to a single, known username and password
or social identity.
SSO can also be used to create frictionless identity verification between
separate yet affiliated systems - for example, between websites and customer
service providers like Zendesk or a TV network and cable provider.
Managing Customer Identity Data
Identity Implications
Making the decision to embark on the quest for a single customer view
and focus on identity has many implications for your business from both a
technical and operational standpoint.

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Many businesses fail when it comes to achieving the “holy grail” because
their customer data management system is out of date, and marketing and
IT execs are out of sync when it comes to implementing the infrastructure
needed to support modern marketing goals.
Not All Data Is Created Equal
With such a huge volume of identity data from such a wide variety of sources,
capturing and storing customer data in an accurate and organized manner
can be a nightmare.
80% of the world’s data is unstructured, meaning that it cannot be efficiently
stored in a predefined manner, and comes from sources like social
networks, text messages and videos. In contrast, “structured data” refers to
information that fits neatly into pre-defined database fields, like name, email
address and zip code.
Legacy databases were not built to reconcile both structured and
unstructured data, but without a clear and aggregate understanding of both
data types, achieving a single customer view is impossible.
Calling All Data Types
Businesses cite the inability to automate structured and unstructured
data quickly and effectively among their biggest challenges, with 60%
noting that big data projects typically take at least 18 months to complete
(Kapow Software).
CIO + CMO = ROI
70% of top performing companies say they have a strong CIO - CMO relationship,
compared to just 45% of non-top performers (PwC).
Structured Data Unstructured Data
Name
Email address
Zip Code
Birthday
Gender
Credit card number
Connections and relationships
Emails or text messages
Social network shares
Favorite brands
Video
Audio

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To get the single, real-time view of cross-channel customer identity data
needed to make timely marketing decisions and build relevant user
experiences, marketing and IT must collaborate to choose a dynamic
schema customer identity management database.
This database should automatically collect and reconcile all types of data in
real-time, including demographic, social, behavioral and transactional. This
data must be stored in an organized manner that enables your business to
conduct real-time analysis and make data-driven decisions quickly.
Security and Compliance
In your quest to establish a single, identity-centric view of your customers,
it’s important to prioritize data security and privacy compliance.
Data is every company’s biggest asset, and when your customers entrust
you with their information, it’s your responsibility to protect it. Security must
be a core feature of your customer database - not bolted on as threats
emerge. Go beyond security protocols and look for a database that is
inherently fortified and certified by industry recognized standards such
as ISO 27001.
When it comes to managing customer identities and data from today’s
multitude of networks and applications, your business must adhere to the
privacy policies created by countless lawmakers and third-party identity
providers. Choosing a solution with the ability to automatically manage these
privacy updates in real-time is the key to staying compliant and maintaining
customer trust.
40% of CMOs believe their companies’ IT teams don’t understand the urgency
of integrating new data sources into campaigns to address market
conditions, while 43% of CIOs say that marketing requirements and priorities
change too often for them to keep up (CMO.com).

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Integrating and Applying Data
Across Marketing Campaigns
From Storage to Action
While adopting a database with the ability to store all customer identity
data in a single place is a huge organizational milestone, this still doesn’t
necessarily mean your business has a single customer view.
To achieve this elusive “holy grail,” your database must be configured in a
way that enables marketers and other non-technical decision makers to take
action on the goldmine of data housed inside.
Break Down Data Silos
According to a recent survey, 96% of marketers say that fully integrated
marketing technology would have a positive, strong or very strong effect
on their marketing goals. However, only 4% of respondents claim that their
marketing tools are fully integrated (Signal)!
A modern customer identity database should not only aggregate data across
multiple sources; it should also be able to seamlessly share this data with
your existing third-party marketing platforms and business systems.
Direct integrations and automatic, bi-directional data syncs between
recommendation engines, CRM solutions, ad platforms, email marketing
systems and more turn your database into a single source of customer truth,
regardless of channel or device.
93% of executives believe their organization is losing an average of 14% of annual
revenue without the ability to act on the customer data they collect (Oracle).

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Integration in Action
Delivering customers with relevance at each touch point throughout the
customer journey is the linchpin of creating direct customer relationships and
lifetime loyalty. Consider the following simple yet powerful example:
A customer logs into an ecommerce site using her Facebook account. After
browsing for a few minutes, she shares two dresses with her Facebook network.
She adds one to her cart, but abandons the purchase mid-checkout.
To combat this, a site with a fully integrated marketing strategy could then
email her a coupon for 25% off the dress of her choice, re-target her with
ads for women’s clothing and accessories on Facebook, and greet her with
a personalized showcase of items matching her desired dress the next time
she logs in.
If that’s not a personal, Starbucks-esque experience, then what is?
Data → Insights
One critical and often overlooked hurdle to achieving a single customer
view is the inability of non-technical business leaders to independently
analyze end-user data. In fact, a recent Aberdeen study found that less than
¼ of the information that companies control is even available for extracting
insights (WSJ).

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Collaborate with IT to ensure that the key stakeholders in the marketing
organization have the ability to analyze customer identity data via an easily
accessible dashboard, giving them the power to make strategic, data-driven
marketing decisions anytime, anywhere.
This dashboard should allow marketers to run complex queries, build
custom filters and audience segments with no code required, and save and
export reports. Not only does this save valuable IT time and resources, but
it also provides those on the frontlines of the business with the ability to
effectively harness the economic value of customer data.
The Holy Grail
What a Single Customer View Can Do
By enabling all business leaders to analyze, understand and take action
on customer identity data, you’ve done it — you have achieved a single
customer view!
The opportunities this “holy grail” presents to optimize your user experiences
are virtually endless. Let’s take a look at how some of today’s leading
brands are using customer knowledge to win business, build relationships
and drive loyalty.

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Email Marketing
When fans login socially to Hunter Hayes’ website, they are asked to provide
their birthdays. This information is stored and passed to an email marketing
platform that automatically dispatches birthday emails to fans on their special
days, offering a celebratory birthday discount.
Targeted Advertising
By prompting users to sign in to the Winter Olympic Games community
platform and the Canadian Olympic Team site using Gigya’s Social Login,
the Canadian Olympic Committee is able to gain permission-based access
to specific demographic and psychographic information housed within their
social profiles.
Happy Birthday! I hope you are getting a little “crazy”
on your special day!
To kick off your celebration, enjoy 15% off the next
time you shop in Hunter’s online store - just enter
the code Z6LQKOKIHWDW at checkout.
Have a great one! - HH Road Guy

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Using Gigya’s Customer Insights dashboard to analyze fans’ permission-
based data, the Canadian Olympic Committee discovered that users logging
in via Facebook to the Winter Olympic Games community platform share
similar demographic profiles, as well as interests in Canadian hockey teams,
TV shows like The Big Bang Theory and Ellen Degeneres and particular
gaming apps.
These types of insights are used to build custom and look-alike audience
segments to reach users with similar profiles who are most likely to convert
across Facebook and Twitter, increasing Facebook ad conversion rates by
106% and decreasing campaign costs by 51%!
Personalized Recommendations
Culinary king McCormick establishes user identity by giving site visitors the
option to log in traditionally or socially. It is then able to tie all on-site activity,
including social shares, recipe and spice favorites and shopping list items to
a single user profile to help build out a user’s unique “Flavor Print,” or taste
profile. It then uses this information to recommend additional recipes she
may like.

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Driving Valuable Behaviors
To foster member loyalty while increasing new fitness club sign-ups, 24 Hour
Fitness optimized its referral process by allowing members to share unique
guest passes with their friends via email or a variety of social networks.
24 Hour Fitness is then able to segment these referred members based on
their responsiveness to send tailored emails that nurture them through the
sign-up process.
As customers refer their friends, 24 Hour Fitness uses Gigya’s influencer
reporting to rank its top advocates. The fitness club then rewards these
influencers with customized rewards packages, promoting brand loyalty and
future referrals. This program led to more than 8,400 new direct referrals
and lifetime value revenue of more than $600k in just one month.

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Cross-Channel Commerce
To turn unknown shoppers into known customers during the holiday season,
DICK’S Sporting Goods created a highly relevant, cross-channel shopping
experience by letting consumers log into and manage their own personal
“Gift Lockers” from any device.
Consumers could add their favorite items to their lockers by browsing online,
taking mobile photos of items in store or scanning catalogue QR codes, as
well as share these lockers directly with their social networks.
“DICK’S Sporting Goods saw an increase in online sales during the holiday
season by incorporating Gigya’s Social Login and Share software into our
Gift Locker experience. Allowing users to sign-in and share socially across
devices has been instrumental in driving customer acquisition and retention.”
— Jay Basnight, Director of Digital @ DICK’S Sporting Goods

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Gigya, the Gigya logo, and Customer Identity Management Platform are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Gigya Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. All other
trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Gigya does not own any end user data or maintain any other rights to this data, other than utilizing it to make Gigya’s services available to
our clients and their end users. Gigya acts as an agent or back-end vendor of its client’s website or mobile application, to which the end user of our client granted permissions (if applicable). Gigya
facilitates the collection, transfer and storage of end user data solely on behalf of its clients and at its clients’ direction. For more information, please see Gigya’s Privacy Policy, available at
http://www.gigya.com/privacy-policy/.
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The Trusted Platform for
Identity-Driven Relationships
About Gigya
Gigya’s Customer Identity Management Platform helps companies build
better customer relationships by turning unknown visitors into known, loy-
al and engaged customers. With Gigya’s technology, businesses increase
registrations and identify customers across devices, consolidate data into
rich customer profiles, and provide better service, products and experi-
ences by integrating data into marketing and service applications.
Gigya’s platform was designed from the ground up for social identities,
mobile devices, consumer privacy and modern marketing. Gigya provides
developers with the APIs they need to easily build and maintain secure
and scalable registration, authentication, profile management, data analyt-
ics and third-party integrations.
More than 700 of the world’s leading businesses such as Fox, Forbes, and
Verizon rely on Gigya to build identity-driven relationships and to provide
scalable, secure Customer Identity Management.
To learn how Gigya can help your business achieve a single customer
view, visit gigya.com, or call us at 650.353.7230.