Merged Profiles causing an issue for push notifications

[akwankl]

Hi all,

This is becoming an increasingly bigger problem for our AEP instance. We've noticed that more and more profiles are getting merged together due to common ECIDs, meaning customers would login to different accounts with the same ECID browser and as a result the profiles are getting merged together.

This is making our push notification strategy more riskier day by day because we could be targeting devices that are completely not associated with the intended account we want to target. As an example, if we have a campaign that wants to remind customers to pay their bill, the customer could be getting the wrong notification due to them logging into another person's account(say parents account) and having their profiles merged together.

How can we address this in AJO?

Thanks.

[Manoj_Kumar_]

Hello @akwankl 

My suggest would be to use make the customer Id as primary identifier (if the customer is authenticated).

Also, While sending push notification always last login is considered as activate account on that device and all the personalization would be coming from that account.

[akwankl]

Hi @Manoj_Kumar_ ,

How do we only send push notifications to last login? My understanding is we can only send push notifications at a profile level, meaning all ECIDs under that profile. How do we only send to ECIDs that's last login to the account?

[alejovillegaslopez]

Hi @Manoj_Kumar_ any update around @akwankl 's question? Im also getting same experience, it seems is not filtering by logged in / logged out status. Maybe in the body to send push notifications? a field to specify this? Thanks for any help! 

[Manoj_Kumar_]

Hello @alejovillegaslopez 

It is a bit tricky for non-authenticated users. You will have to refresh the ECID for any new customer who is interacting with this app.

@akwankl  @alejovillegaslopez  Could you please explain the use case and how many customers interact with this same device? Is this kiosk or a personal device?

[alejovillegaslopez]

hello @Manoj_Kumar_ the problem could be explained like a family that uses the same device with different accounts, we dont want to sent push notifications for people who are not the target; or even if you already are NOT logged in into the app; why should I keep receiving such type of notifications?, you know?. I tried refreshing the ECID on every new user with resetIdentities method but it does not work(not sure if the SDKs have any other solution apart of this one, if so, can you please provide some guide. Thanks!), it does not matter if you have a logged in/logged out status. We want to filter notifications by user. Any help would be appreciated  

[Manoj_Kumar_]

Hello @alejovillegaslopez 

When the second user logs in at that time you will have to change the identifier to something unique like customer id

There is an function called syncIdentifier and you can make the customerId as primary identifier. This way profile won't be merged with ECID.

Code sample:

https://github.com/adobe/aepsdk-react-native/blob/b575cbd34cd751bfd1b06f6f60c1c96ae2dfec71/apps/AEPS...

[Anuhya-Y]

@akwankl 

While there's no easy fix to completely eliminate merged profiles using the same device (ECID), there are approaches to minimize it. This would likely involve a significant overhaul of how ECID associates with other identifiers. For more information, check out the blog: https://www.credera.com/insights/how-resolve-personalization-issues-shared-devices?redirect=true&ref...

[akwankl]

Hi @Anuhya-Y, 

Would you know if this is something the product team is looking to address? I would think this would be quite a common issue across other customers too.

Thanks.

[Anuhya-Y]

@akwankl To the best of my knowledge, this isn't on the product roadmap. The approach to identifying unique customers varies between brands, and the solutions to minimize the impact of shared devices among customers depend on the other tools involved in the architecture.

[Ivan_Mironchuk]

Take a look at this page on merge policies and see if that helps at all:

https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/experience-platform/profile/merge-policies/overview

cc @ShotaId 

[akwankl]

Hey @Ivan_Mironchuk,

I tried using merge policy to address this issue and I don't think it helped. I tried building a merge policy without identity stitching and at the identity level I wanted to target, and have segments configured to use that merge policy. 

The result was that the journey using these segments would refer back to the profiles using the default merge policy which has identity stitching. I think what would be super helpful is the ability to choose targeting dimensions like ACS can.