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How should I handle customers creating multiple profiles with multiple emails?

  • 9 June 2023
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calebstephen
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I feel like this question has probably been asked before but couldn’t find a thread pertaining to this particular issue.

 

How should I be handling having the same customer creating multiple profiles with different email addresses but the same phone number? I know that Klaviyo prioritizes the email a unique identifier. 

Found cases where

  • they would already have a profile and then abandon a cart with under a new email thus creating a new profile
  • have an account created at much earlier date but then, and then create a new profile with a new email
  • also assuming there are cases of people trying to to use a “first time purchase” offer multiple times. 

My issue comes to when looking at the activity logs on all these accounts they seem to be “active”. I have understand having multiple email accounts for work and personal, etc. But is there a way to maintain all this info under the same account so I can get a full view of the customer behavior? I’ve into a few situations where for example it looks like I have 5 one time purchasers for $100 but with some digging its revealed to be 1 five time purchaser for $500. At varying scales this makes a huge difference in how I would choose to communicate with that individual. 

I understand if this is just a normal annoyance that comes with this type of work, but wanting to make sure I am not missing a feature that would help keep track of the data better/more efficiently.

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Best answer by David To 13 June 2023, 17:27

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David To
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Hello @calebstephen,

Welcome back to the Klaviyo Community!

I don’t believe you’re missing anything in this sort of situation. Although annoying, there isn’t much that can be done when someone decides to open a net new email address to take advantage of any discounts you may be offering. 

Some common methods to combat this would be enabling double opt-in and moving your discount codes further up/later on in your flows. Although many brands will offer a discount code right after signing up for a newsletter or abandons a cart, this tends to lead to abuse. You may gain a large number of newsletter subscribers, but oftentimes, they’ll need to be purged for being unengaged later on. 

In my experience, moving a discount code later on through the flow will actually help build brand loyalty and retention. Instead of rewarding someone for subscribing - which almost seems like bribing someone to join your newsletter, putting users through a welcome series flow journey to learn more about your brand can help influence how your subscribers view your brand. This method actually rewards your customers for learning about your brand, in addition to helping you identify those users who are interested in the brand versus those in it just for a discount.

I hope this helps!

David

calebstephen
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Hey David, 

 

Thank you for the reply, it helps clear things up a little bit. However, the scenario of people signing up to use the code from the sign up offer is by the rarest case. Maybe only 5 or 6 that I have come across. 

I had one customer who has

  • purchased online from one email
  • purchased in store and had receipts sent to another other email, therefore account was created in Shopify
  • Then purchased things through the shop app under a third, different email

All accounts said they had 7 orders, which made think that there was 3 customers with 21 orders between them but it was all the same individual. When I look at metrics are those 7 orders each counted 3 times for each account or are they all being counted once?

I am just trying to grasp how this data is treated in reports and such? 

David To
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Userlevel 7
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Hey @calebstephen,

From your description, this sound like a single returning customer. Meaning, it would be a single customer who owns multiple email addresses with a total of 21 orders.

Because this single customer used multiple email addresses for different orders, they would have multiple unique profiles in Klaviyo. Reports in Klaviyo would count these as independent profiles. 

Although troublesome, there really wouldn’t be much that can be done if a customer decides to provide a different email address for varying purchases. In my own experience, I too, will use different email addresses when making purchases for different reasons. For example, providing one email address when making an order online to ensure I receive the confirmation and shipping emails. But provide a different one in stores because I want to gain the store’s reward program. 

Some ways you can try to mitigate this would be manually merging profiles you’ve identified as being duplicate customers. This method would help in stitching the data together when it comes to reporting since it would consolidate multiple profiles into one. Keep in mind merging profiles is a permanent action that cannot be undone, so I would recommend ensuring this is the course of action you want to take before doing so. 

Alternatively, I’ve also seen some brands implement external IDs for identifying customers/profiles instead of Klaviyo’s default identification method of email address. Doing so would allow them to better stitch profiles together earlier on in the process through their own backend system. Just keep in mind that if you opt to using an unique ID for identification, you will be responsible for identity management within your Klaviyo account.

David

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