Information gives you a lot of power especially when you know how to use it. Similarly, the data match rate also makes you powerful. So, what is this data match rate? Let’s dive deep to find out.
What is the data match rate?
A percentage of users from a file or an audience segment that an onboarder finds and tags with data anonymously. If you want to understand the size of your addressable online audience, it is important to know the match rate for a user set. Data onboarding has become a very popular technique among marketers in recent years.
Furthermore, two vendors can also have the same data match rate but that doesn’t necessarily mean their accuracy and value will be the same. Now, let’s come to our main point here. Data match rate is also among the most common techniques to analyze an identity resolution vendor. However, it is important to note that match rates mean several different things as it depends on the vendor, their partners, and the service they provide.
Types of data match rate
There are two types of data match rates. It is important to understand what type of match rate you are seeing to better understand the data match rate in a better way.
Onboarding
Onboarding refers to the technique when a company uploads a list of purchased data along with email addresses and sends it to a vendor that looks for consumers associated with purchased data and emails. Thus onboarding data match rate type is the number of consumers the vendor identifies from their ecosystem as a percentage of the total data on that list given by the onboarding agency. The formula for calculating this type of data match rate is:
Number of unique records matching at least one identifier ÷ Total number of unique records
Furthermore, it is important to note here that unique records matched to an identifier are the total number of identifiers. Therefore, vendors should look only at the number of data matched instead of counting identifiers.
Vendors should also ensure that the data used in the formula remains consistent. For example, they cannot match by names when the data provided contains addresses. If they do so, they have an inflated rate because multiple people often live in a household.
Web traffic
The second type of data match rate is when data calculation is based on web traffic. This type refers to the use of identity resolution technology by vendors. Vendors actually match anonymous traffic to known visitors in their networks. This is also known as website visitor identification.
Furthermore, this type of data match rate is the website traffic percentage that vendors can identify. Thus, the match rate varies greatly in this approach. Moreover, email retargeting is the main use case of this approach. Generally, the accuracy gets lower when the match rate gets higher.
Understanding the match rate is of paramount importance
You need to understand match rates for better results. It is important to understand how a vendor is calculating match rates, which approach they’re using, and how they’re getting their online matches. Vendors might boast about their high match rates. However, if their match rate calculations are incorrect, you will get poor results. Moreover, inflated match rates are another factor you need to be aware of. That said, it is of paramount importance to understand match rates and ask questions from your vendor right from the beginning to ensure better results.
It is also important to note that ensuring consistent customer experiences across all channels heavily relies on maximizing your match rate. Proper data management is the best way to do that. Therefore, ask the right questions when looking for data management tools and vendors. Simply put, covering all those aspects leads you to reach your audience with the right message, in the right place, at the right time.
