Overview
Modern Retail integrates Counterpoint with popular ecommerce platforms such as Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, and Magento. As part of this integration, we'll integrate or match up the customers from your website with those in Counterpoint. This article discusses how shoppers on your website match those in Counterpoint.
Counterpoint Email Address
The key to matching customers is the shopper's email address. Modern Retail has developed an ingenious approach to matching up customers, which should overcome most problems you might otherwise experience. Modern Retail's approach ensures:
- Website customers are matched to existing customers in Counterpoint.
- Online customers are not repeated in Counterpoint every time they place an order on your website.
- Customers continue to be matched, even when they change their email address on your website, or when you modify their email address in Counterpoint.
- If the same email address shows up multiple times in your system, the email address attached to the earliest sale takes priority.
How customers are matched up is different based on if it's their very first website order, or for subsequent future orders.
First Order
The customer's email address from their website order will be used to match them in Counterpoint. This matching is done using the Email 1 address field in Counterpoint.
In this example, the customer's email in Counterpoint is "test@test.com", and their Count Point Customer # is "100001". The Customer #, 100001, will be used and associated with this customer in Modern Retail's Integration Middleware, along with a unique customer ID coming from your Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, or Magento website. Modern Retail stores this relationship between the website customer ID and the Counterpoint Customer #.
If the customer's email address does not exist in Counterpoint, then our Counterpoint Integrator will instantly create a customer record for them in Counterpoint and return the Customer # back to Modern Retail's Integration Middleware. These Counterpoint Customer Numbers can be customized by you indirectly in Counterpoint. Please read:
Either way, Modern Retail receives a unique number for the customer from Counterpoint, and associates that customer to the same customer coming from your website.
You might be saying to yourself; what's the big deal? Because Modern Retail is storing the relationship between the IDs from your website and Counterpoint, we only need to key off the customer's email address for the first order!
Subsequent Orders
As discussed above, the customer's email address is only used on the first order, and future orders don't key off of their email address at all. Instead, Modern Retail has already made the association between the Customer # from Counterpoint and the customer's ID from your website. Therefore, we already have the correct Customer # when adding the order to Counterpoint.
This approach prevents duplicate customer records from being created in Counterpoint and allows you or your customers to change their email address without it breaking the relationship. That means your customer can change their email address on the website and they will still be counted as the same customer they've always been in Counterpoint.
Customer Identity
Modern Retail has developed an approach and system to manage the identity of your customers. Every customer will have a unique Modern Retail ID in our system (1), which is matched to the customer's ID coming from Counterpoint (2) and your website (3). We're also able to integrate with Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Loyalty, Email Marketing, etc. and help you manage the customer's identity across these various systems.
Please let us know if you have any questions by submitting a support request in the Admin Panel, we're happy to help. Thank you.