Insider uses certain identifiers and values to identify and unify the user data. For example, if the email address is your business's identifier, the user visits your website and leaves their email address, so the user profile is created on your end with it. When you provide the relevant identifiers, such as email addresses, Insider can use them to differentiate users from other profiles across platforms. In other words, as long as they log in to your website with the registered email address, they will be counted as the same user.
You can also refer to the video below to better understand identifiers and how they help:
User profiles are managed in three ways upon receiving an identification request:
Create a new user profile
If Insider cannot find any existing user profile for the identifiers in the request, a new user profile will be created, and a profile ID will be assigned to the user.
For example, the user visits your website on a desktop and registers with their email address for the first time. Then, Insider will create a user profile ID for them, including the data stored when they were anonymous, and associate it with their email address, regardless of the platform.
Add to an existing user profile
If Insider finds an existing user profile that matches the identifiers, the incoming request will be attempted to be associated with the existing user profile. If the final user profile overrides the identity management rules, limit, and priority configurations will act accordingly.
For example, the user registers on your website on a desktop and later visits it on a mobile. Since they already have a profile ID, the data will be inserted into the same profile ID.
Merge existing profiles
Insider allows you to use multiple identifiers for a user. If Insider finds several existing profiles associated with the incoming identification request, it will try to merge them based on the limit and priority configurations.
For example, you use an email address and a phone number as identifiers, and you might not receive both at the same time. You collect the user’s email address on your website and their phone number in your brick-and-mortar store and share this offline information with Insider, too. Two user profiles are created for that user: one associated with the email address and the other with the phone number. Then, the user visits your website and leaves their phone number on their account. In this case, the identity request, including both the email address and phone number, is received. Even though there are two different profiles on Insider that share the same identifiers, they are merged.
You can also refer to the video below to better understand how a profile is created, updated, and merged:
The video below further illustrates the user journey with practical, real-life examples: