Customer profiles and identity
A customer profile is what a system reads to know who it is dealing with. These explainers cover what a profile is, what fills it, how identity resolution links a customer across devices and sessions, and why a profile has to be current to be worth reading.
In this topic
What is a customer profile?
A customer profile is the single record of what you know about a customer, from identifiers and attributes to recent behavior. Systems read it to decide what to show or do next.
Behavioral vs declared customer data
Declared data is what a customer states about themselves, like preferences set at signup. Behavioral data is what they actually do, captured as events. Declared data ages; behavioral data keeps a profile current.
What is identity resolution?
Identity resolution is the process of linking the identifiers a customer uses across devices and sessions to a single customer. It turns scattered activity into one profile.
What is an identity graph?
An identity graph records the connections between the many identifiers a single customer uses. It is how a system answers whether two ids belong to the same customer.
Deterministic vs probabilistic identity matching
Deterministic matching joins identifiers on exact shared data, like the same login or email. Probabilistic matching infers a link from evidence like device and behavior. They trade precision for reach.
What is identity stitching?
Identity stitching connects the activity a customer generated under one identifier, like an anonymous cookie or a second device, to the rest of their profile once the link is known. It keeps their whole history attached to one person.
Why a customer profile needs to be real-time
A customer profile is only as useful as it is current. When a system reads a profile to decide what to do in the moment, data from yesterday describes a customer who has already changed.
Start with the free tier
Read the ideas, then put them to work: add the SDK, define one attribute, and see an attribute updating against your own traffic in the first session. The free tier runs on the real engine: no card, no sales call.