By default, Raptor utilizes cookies to identify all website visitors. However, in order to match visitors with contacts in your contact database we have to explicitly identify known visitors, such as logged-in users or anonymous visitors who provide their email address or other ID's on your site. This forms the foundation for cross-device user identification.
Defining the right customer identifiers is a critical decision at the beginning of your onboarding. In Raptor, there are two types of identifiers: Hard ID and Soft ID.
Soft ID: These are the cookie IDs that are set when a user visits your website. A single customer can have multiple soft IDs if they have used different devices to access your website.
Hard ID: A Hard ID resides in your database or E-mail Marketing Provider and can be recognized cross-device. It can be an ID set during login on your site and/or an e-mail address set when it is available on the site
How to set up Soft IDs
The Raptor CookieId are set when a user visits your site and accepts marketing cookies, it needs to be attached to every tracking sent to Raptor.
🔍 Note: The Raptor user CookieId should always be sent as a GUID (uuid v4).
For example, a random UUID version 4 could be 8D8AC610-566D-4EF0-9C22-186B2A5ED793.
How to set up Hard IDs
With the Raptor CookieId in order, you'll track all interactions on your website with a soft ID. Now you have to determine the hard IDs, depending on what Raptor product you are implementing and what types of user IDs are accessible in your tech stack.
Hard ID for Website Recommedation and Site Search
Tracking Parameter: UserID
Friendly name: Website ID
The UserID is a unique ID for users who are logged into your site. In other words, it's an ID that resides in your database. The ID can take various forms, such as an e-mail, a GUID or string etc.
⚠️Warning: When deciding your UserID, it is important that the ID is available to all systems that need to call the Raptor API
Hard ID for E-mail Recommendations and E-mail Triggers
Tracking Parameter: RUID
Friendly name: Raptor E-mail Marketing ID
RUID is a used for tracking and sending users to your e-mail marketing provider.
Whether you want to track users using an e-mail or an External E-mail marketing ID that lives in your e-mail marketing provider, is up to you.
The identifier must always be set as RUID in the Raptor tracking template, when it becomes available on the site.
🔍 Note: Raptor recommends sending e-mails as RUID, since e-mails are typically identified on your website more often than an external E-mail marketing ID. This increases the recognition of Hard IDs. Recognizing Hard IDs is key when working with personalization within E-mail Recommendations and E-mail Triggers.
E-mail as RUID
As soon as a user’s e-mail is available on the site, it can be sent to the tracking. This typically occurs when:
- Users complete a purchase
- Users sign up for a newsletter
- Users create an account on the site
- Users log into your site
- Users click in newsletters*
*Due to GDPR regulations, it is not legal to include the user’s e-mail in clear text in a URL when redirecting to your site. This issue is resolved with Raptors REAID (Raptor Email Address Id).
The ReaId is an arbitrary ID created by Raptor's server and represents the user’s e-mail . When a user clicks on a newsletter, the ReaId must be included in the URL, and subsequently, the same ReaId should be set in the tracking for Raptor. Behind the scenes, Raptor translates the ReaId back into an e-mail, which is then tracked.
External Marketing ID as RUID
Typically, the E-mail Marketing ID exists solely within the e-mail provider, only allowing it to connect with the soft ID when the user clicks in a newsletter.
Define your IDs
As you can see, Raptor provides you with great flexibility in terms of how you want to track your users. If you feel a bit confused, don't worry. Your setup most likely matches one of the following 3 scenarios.
Scenario 1:
You have two different hard IDs to identify users across your website and e-mail marketing provider.
Hard ID for Website Recommedation and Site search: The unique ID for logged-in users should be sent in the parameter UserId (WebsiteID).
Hard ID for E-mail Recommedations and E-mail Triggers: If the ID used in the e-mail marketing provider is an e-mail, simply send the email as RUID and activate reaid sync.
Scenario 2:
You have two different hard IDs to identify users across your website and email marketing provider.
Hard ID for Website Recommedation and Site search: The unique ID for logged-in users should be sent in the parameter UserID (Website ID).
Hard ID for Email Recommedations and Email Triggers: If the ID used in the e-mail marketing provider is an External marketing ID (Anything else than an email), simply set your Hard ID as RUID, and do not activate reaid sync.
Scenario 3:
You have a global ID used across both web and email, where the user has the same Hard ID in all instances.
In this scenario, send the ID as both UserId (Website ID) and Ruid (Raptor Email Marketing ID).
⚠️ Warning:
- Whichever option you choose as RUID, make sure to use only one of them for user identification for Email Recommendation and Email Triggers and do not to mix them!
- If you change the RUID from Email to an External UserID or the other way around in your tracking, then your number of recognized users will be forgotten