Objective

If you are wondering how Segment is creating the customer profile and what API or Segment capacity you can leverage to create a customer profile, this guide explains the underlying identity resolution process. You will learn the mechanics behind the Identity Graph, the specific tools and APIs available to manage your users, and what would be the outcome of the Segment profiles for your business.

Product

Twilio Segment

Environment

Segment Console

Procedure 

1. How Segment Creates Customer Profiles

Segment creates customer profiles using Identity Resolution to take event data from across devices and channels and intelligently merge it into complete user or account-level profiles. When Segment receives an incoming event, it evaluates external identifiers (such as userId, anonymousId, or email) using a flat matching logic:

1. Create a new profile: When there are no pre-existing profiles that have matching identifiers to the event, Segment creates a new user profile.

2. Add to existing profile: When there is one profile that matches all identifiers in an event, Segment attempts to map the traits, identifiers, and events on the call to that existing profile.

3. Merge existing profiles: When there are multiple profiles that match the identifiers in an event, Segment checks the Identity Resolution rules and attempts to merge profiles into a single unified record.

2. APIs and Capacities to Create Customer Profiles

You can explicitly create and update customer profiles by leveraging the following Segment capacities and API methods:

1. Identify API: The Segment Identify call lets you tie a user to their identifiers and record traits about them. This call must include a unique userId or an anonymousId, and can include any optional traits you know about the user, like their email and name.

2. Track/Page/Screen API: The Segment track call lets you tie a user to their actions. This call must include a unique userId or an anonymousId, and can include any optional event properties. Track calls can not be used to populate profile traits.

3. Group API: The Group API call is how you associate an individual user with a group, such as a company, organization, account, project, or team.

4. Profiles CSV Uploader: You can use the Profiles CSV Uploader to bulk-add or update user profiles and traits using your existing historical customer data.

5. Computed Traits and SQL Traits: You can add detail to user profiles with new traits and use them to power personalized marketing campaigns. You can use the drag-and-drop interface to build Computed Traits from event data, or run custom queries on your data warehouse using the SQL editor to import SQL Traits back into Segment.

3. The Outcome of the Segment Profile

The direct outcome of building these profiles is a highly accurate, real-time unified customer view. Once these unified profiles are created, you can leverage them in several powerful ways:

1. Audience Building and Activation: You can use this interaction data with customer engagement tools, such as Engage, to deliver personalized, omnichannel experiences. Segment allows you to build audiences and sync them to downstream marketing and advertising destinations.

2. Programmatic Access via the Profile API: Use the Profile API to programmatically query user profiles, traits, and events. This empowers your sales and support teams with complete customer context or helps your organization build in-app recommendations.

3. Data Warehouse Syncing: Profiles Sync connects identity-resolved customer profiles to a data warehouse of your choice. With a continual flow of synced profiles, teams can enrich and use these data sets as the basis for new audiences, attribution analysis, and machine learning

Additional Information