Default ID Strategy - Zeotap docs

Who Should Choose this Strategy?

The Customer Merge strategy is useful for brands that meet the following criteria:

With a lot of anonymous users
With fewer known first-party identifiers and more anonymous or third-party identifiers.
Has access to second-party data that they want to overlay.

When multiple UCIDs exist due to delayed linkage information, Zeotap picks the profile with the latest linkage as the master UCID. All other UCIDs are reconciled to this master, and their corresponding profiles and events are merged into it.
Unlike the Custom ID Strategy, the Default ID Strategy does not have a concept of primary or secondary identifiers. All IDs received are treated equally and used for profile resolution. This means any identifier can be used to look up a customer profile.

Pros

The Default ID Strategy is simple to configure
By default, the anonymous user behavior is unified with the known user profiles.

Cons

Linkages based on low fidelity can lead to the unification of multiple user profiles into one profile due to the presence of common IDs. For example, a family using the same device and browser, share the browser identifiers like GA ID and this may lead to the merging of their profiles together.
As the linkages use all identifiers, this in particular is not ideal for one-on-one personalisation use cases, wherein customers get referred directly to their identity. For example, sending email communication based on their purchase or past interaction.

If your use case requires more control over identifier prioritisation — for example, to prevent low-fidelity identifiers from causing unintended profile merges — consider using the Custom ID Strategy instead.

How does the Strategy Work?

The following steps summarise how this strategy works:

Upon receiving any ID, create a UCID tied to all the IDs present.

After creating the UCID, any data flowing in for the same user against any of the linked identifiers are identified with the same UCID.

A typical use case explaining this strategy is one in which you want to link all the customer’s actions to an anonymous user and their behaviours as a logged-in user. Refer to the table below for more examples.

Note:This strategy is also especially useful when dealing with a lot of anonymous data and third-party identifiers.

Reconciliation

When a new event comes in, if multiple UCIDs were created as a result of delayed linkage information, then there could be multiple UCIDs to consider. In that case, Zeotap functions in the following way:

The profile with the latest linkage is picked as the master UCID and all other matched profiles are merged to it.
All the other UCIDs are reconciled to the master UCID.
All the corresponding profiles and events are merged into the master UCID.

Note:In this use case, there is no priority defined for the identifiers.

We are considering the following IDs to further explain the how Default ID strategy works:

User ID
Email
Cellphone
Maid
GA Client ID

Use Case

Use case	Data Scenario	What Zeotap Does	Profile Created
User A logs into Brand’s mobile app	User ID: U1, Maid: M1	No match found for U1 and M1. Creates a new UCID: Z1 with linkage to all identifiers.	Z1 { User ID: U1, Maid: M1 }
User A logs into Brand’s app on another mobile device	User ID: U1, Maid: M2	U1 matches Z1, M2 has no match. Updates Z1 with the new MAID linkage.	Z1 { User ID: U1, Maid: M2 }
User A logs into Brand’s app 2 on the same device	Email: E1, Maid: M2	No match found for E1. Creates a new UCID: Z2 with linkage to E1 and M2.	Z2 { Email: E1, Maid: M2 }
User A logs onto Brand’s website	User ID: U1, Email: E1, GA Client ID: G1	Matches both Z1 and Z2. Z2 has the latest linkage so Z2 becomes master. Z1 is merged into Z2.	Z2 { User ID: U1, Email: E1, Maid: M2, GA Client ID: G1 }

​Who Should Choose this Strategy?

​Pros

​Cons

​How does the Strategy Work?

​Reconciliation

​Use Case

Who Should Choose this Strategy?

Pros

Cons

How does the Strategy Work?

Reconciliation

Use Case