Overview

Identity resolution involves linking and matching an individual's attributes from different data sources to create a unified identity representation. It combines various data elements to establish connections and create a comprehensive view of the individual. Resolving these users into a single user profile enables marketers to accurately segment and personalize the users based on the data collected across various online and offline resources and avoid any duplication.

The Identity Resolution feature of MoEngage allows you to integrate multiple profiles of the same user obtained from various online and offline data sources (such as Data APIs, SDKs installed in your app, and CSV files). When various sources include clear identity information, such as a customer ID, Email-id, or phone number, you can combine them to build a unified customer profile. This maintains a single source of truth for each user, allowing you to seamlessly track their behavior on your application and regulate your business strategies accordingly.

Use Cases

Identity resolution plays a critical role in the following scenarios:

• A user browses a public listing page on a brand's website, providing their Email-id (the unique ID in MoEngage) and phone number (a custom attribute in MoEngage). While at an offline store, the user uses their phone number to make a purchase. The brand aims to link the browsing activity on the website to the user who purchased at the store using their phone number instead of their Email-id (which serves as the unique ID in MoEngage).
• A brand offers multiple user registration methods, including email login, mobile OTP, and social media logins like Facebook. However, these methods generate different user profiles for the same individual. The brand aims to consolidate these multiple profiles into a single unified profile as it gathers additional information when the user engages in further activities.
• An anonymous user browses product listings on an e-commerce app and adds items to the cart but places the order offline. The e-commerce app wants to track all user activity under the same profile.

Data Ingestion Support

Following are the methods by which you can ingest data into MoEngage using multiple identifiers:

• Data APIs
• SDK

Data APIs

In MoEngage, data ingestion uses an ID as the identifier for creating or updating a user. For workspaces in MoEngage with Identity Resolution enabled, Data APIs (Track User, Create Event, Bulk Import) can be used to create or update users using a specific identifier such as a mobile number or Email-id as configured.

You can:

• Create users through Server-to-Server (S2S) APIs even when they do not have an ID (but have other identifiers).
• Create a user or track activities of a user when identifiers other than ID(for example, Email-id or phone number) are known.

Request Body

The following is a sample cURL request for a Bulk Import API (Transition API) consisting of  the following payloads:

• User payload - attributes must contain at least one of the identifiers you have configured based on which users in MoEngage will be created, updated, or merged.
• Event payload - identifiers must be mentioned within the user_identifiers parameter as follows:
  
  JSON

  "user_identifiers":{
      "moe_mobile":"{{Mobile_Number}}"
  }

Sample cURL Request

curl --location 'https://api-xx.moengage.com/v1/transition?app_id=O7NIHY0AT1K1FL8DR1J1' \

      --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \

      --header 'Authorization: Basic {{Authorization_Key}}' \

      --data '{

        "type": "transition",

        "elements": [

        {

          "type": "customer",

          "attributes": {

            "moe_mobile": "{{Mobile_Number}}",

            "first_name": "John"

          }

        },

        {

          "type": "event",

          "user_identifiers": {

            "moe_mobile": "{{Mobile_Number}}"

          },

          "actions": [

          {

            "action": "AddToCart",

            "attributes": {

              "product": "MacBook Air",

              "Brand": "Apple"

            }

          }

          ]

        }

        ]

      }'

SDK

The following is a sample SDK cURL request consisting of Mobile and Email-id as the identifiers. 

Sample cURL Request

curl --location 'endpoint' \

      --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \

      --data '{

        "viewsInfo": [

        {

          "EVENT_ACTION": "EVENT_ACTION_USER_ATTRIBUTE",

          "EVENT_ATTRS": "{\"USER_ATTRIBUTE_USER_EMAIL\": \"abc@gmail.com\"}",

          "EVENT_L_TIME": "18:06:2024:12:23:48",

          "EVENT_G_TIME": "1718629243210"

        },

        {

          "EVENT_ACTION": "EVENT_ACTION_USER_ATTRIBUTE",

          "EVENT_ATTRS": "{\"USER_ATTRIBUTE_USER_MOBILE\": \"8179321021\"}",

          "EVENT_L_TIME": "18:06:2024:12:23:48",

          "EVENT_G_TIME": "1718629243210"

        }


        ],

        "viewsCount": 3,

        "identifiers": {}

      }'

Impact of Merging Users

MoEngage merges users with the same identifiers.

• Retained user - The user with the latest last seen.
• Merged user - The user whose information is merged into the retained user and then deleted from MoEngage.

After identifiers are configured in the MoEngage backend, user merging will start with newly ingested data. Existing data remains as is, and merging for existing users can be done through the backend script. For more information, refer to Handle Existing Duplicate Users.

If multiple identifiers are set for your workspace, MoEngage merges them if any one of them is the same across multiple users. There is no priority or sequence of merging. For example, your workspace is set with ID, mobile number, and Email-id as the three identifiers. User merging in that workspace happens based on any one of the three identifiers matching.

The following are the effects of user merging on various campaigns and channels:

On Data

• User attribute info - When merged, all user attribute information of the retained user is retained. If user attributes in merged users do not exist in retained users, those attributes are transferred to the retained user profile.

• Device info - When merged, all devices are merged into the retained user, and no device information is lost.
• Events info - All events transferred to the merged user are transferred to the retained user.
• Other data callouts - Users cannot be unmerged after merging. Be careful when configuring identifiers for your workspace.

On Segment

• Active segments - When users are merged, the total number of users in active segments may decrease because users are merged into a single profile.
• Custom segments - Whenever the custom segment is updated, the user count may change.

On Campaign

• User merging may impact the overall reachability number. When merged, the contact details of the merged user will be lost, and hence, a campaign’s overall reachability may be reduced. This also impacts the overall campaign stats.
• Only Data APIs (TrackUser, CreateEvent, BulkImport API) support tracking users with multiple identifiers. Other APIs in MoEngage may still require ID at the moment.
• Campaign APIs or Business provider APIs that provide a callback into MoEngage with user IDs on sending a campaign may lead to user creation in MoEngage.

Reachability Impact

Enable Multi-ID

Set Up Identifiers

You can configure a maximum of five identifiers to merge users in MoEngage. Based on your business requirements, specify the identifiers.

Handle Existing Duplicate Users

MoEngage executes a one-time script to merge the existing users in the workspace. The same identifiers configured for merging will be used to merge the existing users in the workspace. 

You can generate a report after the script is executed, which will indicate every user merge action that is executed.