Integrate with Merkury to enhance Bluecore’s identification rates. Merkury, formally known as 4Cite, is a vendor that uses various methods of customer identification to connect shopper behavior on site to a valid email address. Their tech relies on a co-op network that allows the sharing of deterministically captured email addresses/devices across the network of 500+ brands.
NOTE: This is an advanced feature, please contact your Customer Success Manager to learn more.
HOW DOES THE MERKURY INTEGRATION WORK?
Merkury will have their tag on your website. Using this tag, Merkury reads browser metadata such as IP address, user agent, first and third party cookies etc. and leverages their co-op network to determine shoppers' email address. This email address is then queried in real time against your email file/database to determine if the shopper is known to your brand, or an unknown/prospect (i.e. not in your email file). Only known shoppers who are re-identified are updated into Bluecore’s tables and ID graph.
The main benefit that Merkury provides is that they can re-identify shoppers who are showing up on new devices or a device that has cleared its cookies. To Bluecore, that device would show up as a brand new distinct ID until they identify themselves again (by logging in, checking out, etc.). But if Merkury saw that device in their network and captured an email for it, they can pass it to Bluecore. This enables Bluecore to send more emails & generate more revenue for you.
GETTING STARTED
Merkury & Bluecore will build the integration. However, you will have to place Merkury JS tag on your website and add Merkury parameter to batch ESP (if not Bluecore).
In Bluecore
Merkle requires a csv file of all the customer email addresses Bluecore has for a specific partner. They will also need a daily recurring export feed established. Therefore, you will need to grant the Merkle team SFTP access to the designated folder/location or provide written approval for the Bluecore team to give Merkle SFTP access.
Merkle utilizes Bluecore’s email campaigns to identify customers. They track a UTM parameter that Bluecore creates to identify customers. This email parameter can be a hash or an encrypted one. This tracking parameter is added under the Global Settings (https: //app.bluecore.com/admin/marketing_settings/<namespace>?section=tracking_parameters), so these settings are applied to all new campaigns.
For existing campaigns, you will need to manually update existing triggers and add the new parameters on the Message tab.
In Merkle
Reach out to your Merkle account representative for directions on how to place the Merkury tag on your website.
FAQs
Q: What data is captured by Merkury?
A: Merkury Tag captures the following data and creates a first party cookie used to provide persistent identity linkages:
IP address
User Agent
Page URL
Page Origin
Page Referrer
Meta Keywords
Page Title
Date, Time and Time Zone
Merkury Session ID
Merkury Tag Version
Merkury Client ID
Merkury Person ID
Merkury 3P cookie ID
Q: How is this data used?
A: The Tag will use the above data points to correlate the visitor to a Merkury Person ID.
Q: What data is distributed?
A: No client data is used to enrich the Merkury graph during the POC. Data collected post-POC and when mutually agreed to by the parties in rollout production will be used to enrich the Merkury graph.
Q: What is the expected lift in Identification (ID) rate using Merkury?
A: We’ve partnered with Merkury for several clients, and based on the results partners are seeing 20%-49% lift in ID rates.
Q: What is the Merkury network?
A: Merkury currently serves almost 500 brands. By having the Merkury tag on their websites these brands contribute to a repository that consists of device to pseudo-anonymized email address connections. This repository is referred to as the Merkle Network or Merkle 2nd Party Graph. These connections, which are constantly being updated in real time, enable Merkle to leverage a vast data asset that benefits all members of the network.
Q: Is identification of website visitors hampered by users who go incognito or use InPrivate Window?
A: Not entirely. Given that every device has an IP address, that signal combined with other attributes are leveraged as ingredients to help identify the website visitor.
Q: What is a confidence score and how is it valuable?
A: With the fluidity of digital recognition, consumers clearing their cache, tossing their cookies, using multiple email address, using multiple devices, multiple users accessing the same device, etc. it is a constant battle to identify not only associate a user to a device but also to identify the “best” user when there are multiple peoples using the same device. Using an algorithm that combines recognition recency, recognition frequency, and a number of other metrics, Merkle assigns a confidence score to all records; the values assigned are 1 thru 8.
Scores 1-3: Should be leveraged for highly personalized messages such as abandon cart, product, search etc.
Scores 1-5: Should be leveraged for high level personalized messages
Scores 1-8: Should be leveraged for brand campaigns