The identification and merging of anonymous and identified contacts determines how users are recognized through their digital footprint in Connectif. It allows you to connect a contact’s activity on different devices and browsers in the same profile.
1. Properties
Connectif collects the contact's activity information and the data they share, using tags that are generated as the contact browses your ecommerce site.
1.1. Contact identification
Connectif uses three keys to recognize users, only one of which is necessary to identify each contact.
- "trackerId": unique identifier that Connectif assigns to each contact.
- "email": corresponds to the contact's email address.
- "suscription": identifier of the browser's subscription to web push notifications for a particular device.
1.2. Attribution of an event to a contact
The following algorithm determines which contact is performing the action:
1. If the “Contact information” tag does not contain "trackerId","email", nor "suscription" it is understood to be a new anonymous contact.
2. If the “Contact information” tag ontains a valid "email" válido, it will be used to identify the contact with that email address.
If there is no contact with that email address in Connectif, the identification is made according to the following scenarios:
- 2.1 If this “Contact information” tag contains a "trackerId" that does not belong to any contact, it is understood to be a new identified contact with this "email"
- 2.2. If this “Contact information” tag contains a "trackerId" that belonged to an anonymous contact, the "email", and the rest of the optional fields that the tag may contain, such as "_name" or "_surname", will be assigned to that contact.
It is understood to be an existing identified contact. - 2.3. If this “Contact information” tag contains a "trackerId" that belonged to an identified contact whose email is different from this tag’s "email" field, it is understood as a new identified contact and different from the contact identified by the "trackerId".
A new identified contact will be created with that "email" and the rest of the optional fields that the tag may contain, such as "_name" or "_surname".
The identified contact to which the "trackerId" collected by the tag belonged is not altered.
3. As a special scenario under the previous point, if the “Contact information” tag contains a valid "email" (and there is a contact with that email) and, in addition, this tag has the field "trackerId" que that corresponds to the tracker of another different anonymous contact, then the process of Contact merging will take place.
The current contact is determined to be the identified contact identified by the "email".
If the "trackerId" does not belong to an anonymous contact but to an identified one, Contact merging will not be performed. The current contact will also be understood to be the existing identified contact identified by the "email".
4. If the “Contact information” tag does not contain a valid "email" but does contain a "suscription", it will be used to identify the contact.
The identification is made according to the following scenarios:
- 4.1. If this “Contact information” tag does not contain a "trackerId", a check is made to see if there is a contact with the same "suscription".
If so, it is identified as such, otherwise it is understood to be a new anonymous contact. - 4.2. If this “Contact information” tag contains a "trackerId" that belongs to an anonymous contact, a check is made to see if there is any contact with the same "suscription".
If yes, the Contact merging process is performed and the current contact is understood to be the pre-existing contact.
Otherwise, it is understood to be a new anonymous contact. - 4.3. If this “Contact information” tag contains a "trackerId" and it belongs to an identified contact, the identification is performed according to the following scenarios:
- 4.3.1. If there is no other contact with the same "suscription" it is determined to be a nnew anonymous contact.
- 4.3.2. If there is another contact with the same "suscription" and it is an anonymous contact, the Contact merging process is performed and the current contact is identified as the one whose "trackerId" is known.
- 4.3.3. If there is another contact that is also an identified contact, the "suscription" is duplicated in each of them and it is determined that it is a new identified contact and different from the contact identified by the "trackerId".
The identified contact to which the "suscription" collected by the label belonged is not altered.
- 4.3.1. If there is no other contact with the same "suscription" it is determined to be a nnew anonymous contact.
5. If the “Contact information” tag does not contain a valid "email" or "suscription", but does contain a "trackerId" it will be used to identify the contact that has this tracker.
If no contact exists with that tracker in Connectif, it is understood to be a new anonymous contact.
1.3 Contact merging
The contact merging process consists of assigning the properties and workflows of a contact A to a contact B, and the subsequent and immediate deletion of contact A.
There are some nuances to take into account in this process
- The properties of contact B that already have a value will not be overwritten by those of contact A.
- If contacts A and B have any active workflows in common that generate data, the information from both contacts will be taken into account, giving priority to the data from contact B and the data generated by the most recent execution of the nodes.
Keep learning!
To make the most of your Connectif account, we recommend reading these articles next:
- What is a Contact?, to visualize all the information collected by Connectif about your ecommerce site’s registered and anonymous contacts.
- Contact’s activities, to view a contact's activity log and the data it collects.
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Entering a dynamic segment on identifying an anonymous contact, o understand the impact on the segmentation of event attributions to contacts.
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How to import contacts, to import contacts and their properties into Connectif.