Datalicious Blog Cross Domain: Achieving Customer Journey Transparency

How accurate is your understanding of your customer's complete journey? Does your organisation have the ability to track unique visitors across all your web properties? Are you sure your data doesn't get duplicated as users travel between domains?Many marketers are focused on ensuring that their data is valid and accurate enough to effectively analyse a customer's journey from beginning to end. This article introduces a data source that is often overlooked in contributing to that story.Introducing cross domain syncing For companies that own several brands or websites, cross domain syncing can help track a customer's interactions and touch points, while recognising that she is a single user moving across several brands or multiple domains.How do businesses benefit from cross domain syncing? By mapping the entire customer journey, marketers can help provide the customer with a high level experience from start to finish. This can help:Enhance customer satisfactionImprove sales and retentionReduce end-to-end service costsStrengthen the customer's overall experienceExample Let's take Ms. Jones, a user interested in buying a sports watch from brand A.Ms. Jones visits the website of brand A for a sports watch, then realises she has an interest in sports clothes to go with her new watch. This results in her visiting a new site called brand B that happens to be owned by the same organisation as brand A.Normally, the ability to track Ms. Jones' journey would be broken as a result of this crossing over between domains. This causes marketers to miss critical information about Ms. Jones' journey as it continues, and they're unable to effectively analyse her behaviour due to the link in the customer journey being broken.This inability to track between different touch points can therefore miss the bigger and more important picture, the customer's end to end experience.For example, certain questions may go unanswered:Where did the user's journey begin and end?How many users were unique users?How long did it take the user to finalise their decision?Did the user convert? If so, how do we know that they did?The limitations of "link decoration"Cross domain syncing usually involves utilising "link decoration". This means recognising when a user has clicked a link on one domain that leads them to a different domain. Additional URL parameters are then appended in order to sync the cookies. However, link decoration may only be useful when the user journey moves directly between domains.Link Decoration Datalicious' Cross Domain Syncing ProcessHow Datalicious achieves cross domain syncing We use a different solution involving a mix of first and third party cookies required for users visiting your site without direct cross site interaction. When users visit a single domain, a first party cookie will be issued and maintained. We then pair that cookie with our third party cookie system. Hence, when a user enters a new domain, Datalicious will be able to map the two sets of cookies to achieve single user recognition.Once the additional implementation is set up and the required code is added, the final step involves configuration via Google Analytics. By default, Google Analytics only uses first party cookies that makes cross domain visibility difficult to implement. Datalicious' solution addresses this issue.Once unique users are recognised across multiple domains, we can help you amplify new business activity by:Building audiences and retargeting your business with specific brands Monitoring cannibalism between owned brands and/or servicesSingle customer view for life-time value - You may be able to monitor digital spend per user across brands that generate more revenue and profit.Four main highlights of cross domain syncing: Enhances visibility by tracking detailed user behaviour and simplifies the process of targeting the right audience. This facilitates better positioning, tailored offers and smarter marketing.Enhances the marketer's understanding of the overall customer journey across different domains, brands, services, applications and digital or non digital assets.Reduces the impact of market cannibalism. This enables marketers to gain deeper insights into the products or services that are falling behind and prevent them from being eaten away by new ones in the market.Flexibility to combine multiple properties into a single reporting interface AKA Roll-up reporting. This allows marketers to analyse all source properties in one given location and identify users across different domains via various digital platforms such as the web store, community and mobile applications. Roll up reporting can help your organisation conduct the required analysis for all platforms, and in any given combination.Let Datalicious do the work for youGet in touch with us at sales@datalicious.com so we can guide you towards achieving the best customer journey experience for your customers.