How Retailers Can Prevent Wilting ID Rates

Identification helps retailers create more informed marketing and customer experiences, from personalizing messages early in their journey to treating loyalists like loyalists. The more site visitors can be identified, the more retailers can provide relevant, timely experiences that drive other critical performance metrics.

A retailer that does very little to increase its visitor identification typically has an ID rate that hovers below 10 percent. The small number of visitors who are identified tend to be shoppers who are logged into the site, such as loyalty members or subscribers. This means retailers aren’t capturing information on anyone they haven’t already engaged with.

Retailers that are invested in increasing their ID rate get to know more visitors, which increases the scale and effectiveness of their marketing. A retailer’s ID rate can easily get into the mid-to-high double digits, and sometimes as high as 75 percent or more. However, identification is hardly a “one and done” concept. Like a garden, it needs to be watered, fed and weeded to stay healthy. Just as a plant can wilt and die without water and regular nourishment, an ID rate can easily wither if retailers aren’t monitoring and managing every step of the way.

Why ID Rates Wither

The first category of issues that can hurt an ID rate have to do with consumer behavior. Even if a retailer starts the year with a very high ID rate, there will be natural erosion based on the way identification works. Identification requires a link between a cookie dropped on a user’s device and a connection to that user’s record in the retailer’s database. That link can be broken in a number of ways. People may use cookie-blocking software, clear their cookies at regular intervals, switch devices, or get a new email address or phone number. These factors quickly add up if a retailer doesn’t have a system in place to “re-identify” shoppers in their database on a regular basis.

Next, retailers contend with a constantly changing technical environment. People across the organization, agencies and vendors change the website, mobile and email configuration on a regular basis. An encrypted link might get replaced or broken, a data capture interstitial might be removed, or an email newsletter template updated or even taken over by a new vendor that doesn’t incorporate identification elements. A marketer tasked with maximizing ID rates needs to act like the “ID police,” searching for reasons why an ID rate might have taken a nosedive and then re-establishing the connection with a new encryption link, data capture or other technical element. They should also be looking for new opportunities to identify shoppers via existing data which isn’t leveraged or new sources of identifying data.

Finding the Perfect ID Rate

Identification rate is one piece of a larger group of metrics that help a brand move customers through the funnel. Therefore, simply maximizing ID rate for the sake of it isn't always the best approach. A retailer that has invested heavily in its brand might determine that certain types of identification (e.g., an email capture interstitial on the homepage) send the wrong impression for long-term loyalty even if it may up their short-term ID rate. By adopting a more subtle approach, they sacrifice a few percentage points on their ID rate, but they capture consumer engagement and maintain the brand's voice.

Retailers with an eye towards long-term customer value might find that maximizing identification above all else leads to bad practices. While couponing can get more customers in the door and increase identification rates, it can also erode margins and attract customers unlikely to become valuable repeat purchasers.

Marketers need to work as a team to determine the right balance between identification and the specific customer experience. Bluecore finds that moments of high purchase intent are great opportunities to grow ID rate. For example, during Black Friday, Notify Me/Back In Stock email capture performed 3.5 times higher than other campaigns.

The placement and number of identification opportunities is also brand-specific. A discount-oriented brand might find that its customers are happy to get lots of requests for identification because their offers get more and more personalized when they do. Conversely, a brand with customers who consider each purchase and enjoy the content and story of the shopping experience might need a more subtle approach.

For example, Lane Bryant doesn’t interrupt users’ experience with interstitials upon entry to push offers for sign-ups. Instead, it waits until further in the session to identify via email sign-ups, and then only through an unobtrusive tab in the bottom corner of the website. Lane Bryant has chosen this balance between brand experience and encouraging identification. Each brand should determine its mix of the two with an informed discussion about the benefits of improved identification.

Creating a Great ID Experience

Understanding what lies behind the perfect ID rate for a specific brand can help drive a great identification strategy. Like a gardener invested in the perfect rosebush that needs gentle coaxing and pruning, the luxury brand might decide that a subtle slide bar on the bottom of the screen is a good compromise to capture an email address. Meanwhile, the discounter might take a looser approach and launch a high-engagement mobile game in order to grab even more information from its visitors to augment identification with additional identifiers.

These decisions should be based on a number of metrics and tactics. On the metrics side, each retailer wants to maximize customer movement and incremental lift, two things that come from identifying customers. If a brand pushes too hard to identify everyone to the point that it drives people away, it will actually reduce its customer movement and lift metrics. On the other hand, if it finds the right balance, it will capture just enough information to move customers to the next stage, from shopper to first-time purchaser, and first-time purchaser to loyal customer.

When it comes to tactics, each retailer engages with shoppers differently. Some have newsletters and loyalty programs while others focus their marketing on beautiful videos and influencers. These different approaches require either a more active identification strategy or one that's a bit more consumer-led.

Just like a garden, once it gets going, some gardeners are happy for some wildflowers to take root and for the cucumbers to move over into the lettuce patch, while other gardens are pristine and weed free. Whatever a retailer’s perfect ID rate is, keeping it where it is or driving it even higher requires constant attention and conversation with the rest of the organization.

Bradford Johnson leads Bluecore's strategic consulting team of retail experts.