360-degree Profile & Unification

A 360-degree customer profile is a single, unified record of a customer that aggregates data from every touchpoint they have with your business — website visits, form submissions, purchases, ad clicks, CRM records, and more.

In CustomerLabs, this profile is built progressively. Every event or identify call sent to CustomerLabs adds new data points to the profile. Over time, the system stitches together anonymous and identified interactions into one comprehensive record.

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What Data Goes Into a 360-degree Profile?

A complete profile in CustomerLabs consists of the following data layers:

Data Layer	Description	Examples
Identity Data	Who the customer is	Email, phone, name, address
Behavioral Data	What the customer does	Page views, clicks, form submissions, purchases
Transactional Data	What the customer bought	Order value, product name, quantity, frequency
Engagement Data	How the customer interacts	UTM source, channel, first touch, last touch
External IDs	How other systems identify the customer	CRM ID, Facebook FBP, Shopify cart token, GA4 client ID
Group / Account Data	What company the customer belongs to	Company name, website, account ID

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How CustomerLabs Builds the Profile

Step 1 — Anonymous Tracking

When a user first visits your website, CustomerLabs assigns them an anonymous user ID (customerlabs_user_id). All their activity — page views, product views, clicks — is attributed to this anonymous profile.

During the first page view events, external ids like click ids, acquisition source etc are captured and stored in the anonymous profile.

Anonymous User (cluid: abc123)
  └── Page Viewed //click ids, acquisition source etc
  └── Page Viewed
  └── Clicked: "Start Free Trial"
  └── Clicked: "Start Free Trial"

Step 2 — Identity Resolution

When the user submits a form or logs in, the _cl.identify() call is triggered with a known identifier (email or phone). CustomerLabs then merges the anonymous profile with the identified profile.

Identified User (email: john.doe@example.com)
  └── All previous anonymous events are now merged into this profile
  └── New traits added: first_name, last_name, phone, company

This is called Identity Resolution — the process of matching anonymous and known user identifiers to the same person.

Note

If a user visits from multiple devices or browsers, CustomerLabs resolves them into a single profile as soon as a shared identifier (email or phone) is observed across those sessions.

Step 3 — Progressive Enrichment

Every subsequent event — whether it’s a new page view, a product purchase, or a form update — enriches the existing profile. External IDs like facebook__fbp, shopify_cart_token, and crm_user_id are also appended over time.

Profile: john.doe@example.com
  ├── Traits: first_name, last_name, phone, company, address, city, country
  ├── External IDs: identify_by_email, identify_by_phone, facebook__fbp, crm_user_id
  ├── Events: Form Submitted, Product Viewed, Purchased (×3), Checkout Made
  └── Group: ABC Corporation (website: www.example.com)

Profile Unification

Profile unification is the process of correctly associating all events and traits from multiple identifiers to a single canonical profile.

Identifier Priority

CustomerLabs resolves profiles using the following identifier hierarchy:

1. identify_by_email — highest priority, most reliable
2. identify_by_phone — used when email is not available
3. customerlabs_user_id — used for anonymous sessions
4. Custom external IDs (e.g., crm_user_id) — supplementary

Caution

Sending the wrong identifier in the ib: true field can cause duplicate profiles or incorrect merges. Always use a stable, unique identifier (preferably email) as the primary ib.

Merge Scenarios

Scenario	What Happens
Same email seen across two sessions	Events from both sessions are merged into one profile
Anonymous CLUID tied to email via identify	Anonymous history is stitched to the identified profile
Phone-only user later provides email	Both identifiers co-exist on the same profile
Group event sent with igb: true	Company profile is created or updated and linked to the user

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The Unified Profile in CustomerLabs

Once data is unified, CustomerLabs maintains a single source of truth for each customer. This unified profile powers:

• Audience Segmentation — Filter users by traits, behaviors, events, or group membership.
• Ad Audience Sync — Send enriched, matched audiences to Meta, Google, LinkedIn, and other platforms.
• Server-side Events — Fire conversion events with user context to improve ad algorithm training and Event Match Quality (EMQ).
• CRM & Webhook Sync — Push unified profile data to your CRM or downstream tools.

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Anonymous vs. Known Profiles

State	Description
Anonymous	User has not yet been identified. Tracked by customerlabs_user_id.
Known	User has been identified by email or phone via _cl.identify().
Unified	Anonymous history and known profile have been merged.

Tip

CustomerLabs automatically creates profiles for anonymous visitors. This means behavioral data (page views, clicks) is captured even before a user identifies themselves. When they do identify, all prior events are retroactively attributed to their profile.

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Related Concepts

• External IDs and Identity Resolution
• Identify (Create / Update User)
• Tracking Group Accounts
• Creating Audiences