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Creating anonymous profiles from marketing IDs

This guide explains how to create and track anonymous customer profiles in the Squiz Customer Data Platform (CDP) using marketing identifiers (such as UTM parameters). These profiles support personalization before sign-in, progressive profiling, and campaign attribution tracking.

Overview

Anonymous tracking measures website engagement and monitors visitor behavior without requiring a sign-in, building persistent profiles that follow users across sessions and devices.

Purposes:

Unified profiles

Connects anonymous activity across sessions and devices.

Personalization before sign-in

Provides more targeted and more granular information before a visitor logs in.

Analytics integration

Integrates with analytics tools such as Power BI and Tableau.

The CDP uses marketing identifiers (UTM tag or platform-specific IDs) to create and update anonymous profiles from campaigns or referrals before a visitor signs in.

How anonymous profile tracking works (at a glance)

  1. Visitor arrives through a campaign link and the marketing ID is captured.

  2. CDP creates an anonymous profile and stores page view behavior.

  3. Consent is required before tracking.

    1. For users who land on the site and then accept the cookie consent, tracking will still occur on the second page view, when the referral URL is evaluated.

  4. Profiles are updated as the visitor interacts with the site.

    1. Page views: Up to 100 of the latest pages are displayed on the CDP Single Customer Profile page.

    2. Forms: A CDP event is created to map form submission answers to the customer profile.

  5. Profiles are used for personalization and segmentation.

Use Cases

Progressive profiling

Tracks visitor engagement and updates profiles over time.

When users later sign in or submit forms, their anonymous data merges into the Single Customer View (SCV).

Multi-channel campaign tracking

Assigns profiles with the same identifier to multiple campaign channels (for example, email, social, paid ads) to track cross-channel behavior.

Marketing attribution and segmentation

  • Measures engagement and builds segments based on anonymous behavior.

  • Attributes form submissions and other actions to specific campaigns using the unique marketing identifier.

How to set up anonymous profile tracking

Anonymous customer profiles have

SCV schema updates

Extend the Single Customer View (SCV) schema in the Squiz DXP CLI.

Add fields for storing UTM parameters: utm_campaign maps to the channels attribute (array)

Additional attributes can be added as needed to capture more UTM tag values against the profile in SCV.

Campaign links detect and capture the marketing identifier (a unique user ID) from emails or social media feeds.

Examples of unique identifiers by platform:

Platform Parameter Example

HubSpot

_hsenc

p2ANqtz-9cAB9DFCtAJt2evuc0FYQbzJmwg_KTvC-3Yy6CiA3flOmLaJZjYHi7nOc-oLyV8eemKUoAD2pKHH_Yh-9_au_pBB3TWg

Mailchimp

user-defined

custom

Triple Whale

tw_profile_id

01HYCK1C68TFA38J8RRE8AW022

Klaviyo

_kx

L2MVaPzWo6uqWKrGuVec-rB1PHpfcU-iTBw_xq25a0YneFiQlDYNwTJhyGzjn4Dp.SpvKd8

  • Tracking values are stored only after cookie consent is granted.

  • Global site consent must be configured.

  • Use the content banner component for collecting cookie consent

  • Or add the cookie value to the existing cookie consent collection.

    • Consent cookie example:

      `squiz.cdp.consent`: `{"CDPConsent":1,"documentVersion":"1.0"}`

Create a campaign customer profile event feed

  1. Navigate to Customer Data Platform (CDP)  Event Feed.

  2. Click Create Event Feed and select Customer Profile Event Feed.

  3. In your marketing platform, configure Campaign UTM Parameter:

    1. Specify the URL query parameter to monitor (for example, utm_campaign).

  4. In your marketing platform, configure the Unique Identifier Attribute field:

    1. Maps the marketing ID to the profile for creation and updates.

  5. Map the parameter from the campaign to the channels attribute (for example, utm_campaign).

  6. Click Save and confirm success.

Anonymous profile event feed configuration
Figure 1. Anonymous profile event feed configuration (click for full size)

Retention settings

  • Profiles expire after inactivity: 60, 90, or 180 days.

  • Clicking another campaign link within the retention period extends the profile’s life.

Viewing profiles from the CDP single customer view

Anonymous profile event feed details
Figure 2. Anonymous profile event feed details

  • The Profile Details page contains the unique identifier generated from the marketing redirect link configured in the event feed.

  • The Attributes tab shows tracked attributes.

  • The Recent Events section shows up to 100 page-view events in the Customer Details interface.

    Each log includes the following details:

    • Date

    • Timestamp

    • Event type

    • URL

      If necessary this is presented truncated with ellipses. The Full URL always displays on the Events tab.

Technical reference

Privacy and validation

The privacy of anonymous profiles can be maintained using Campaign types in the SCV and anonymous profiles can be validated using Identifier character length validation.

Campaign types in the SCV

Profiles created using the Place the Page Belongs To event feed are assigned a Campaign User type in the Single Customer View (SCV).

Using the Campaign User type ensures the following:

Separate from known user profiles

Campaign Users are anonymous or unverified and are not blended into the standard known user records.

Controlled tracking

This separation ensures unverified profiles are tracked and updated progressively without affecting the integrity of verified customer data.

Other benefits

  • Supports personalization before login and multi-channel campaign tracking.

  • Maintains separate SCV data for known users.

  • Supports progressive profiling, so these Campaign Users merge with known profiles once verification occurs (for example, form submission or sign-in).

Assigning anonymous profiles to the Campaign User type provides personalization and analytics while maintaining data accuracy for the site and privacy for verified customers.

Identifier character length validation

If the DXP knows the campaign type, validation is enforced, and a profile is established only if validation passes.

Strict character length validation is implemented for known campaign types:

Campaign Type Required Character Length

HubSpot contact identifier

Exactly 100 characters

Klaviyo specific (KX) contact identifier

Exactly 73 characters

Triple Whale (TW) contact identifier

Exactly 26 characters

Identifier character length validation ensures only valid campaign IDs create profiles, maintaining data accuracy and protection against query string brute force attacks.

Squiz continues to add more validations as new marketing platform integrations and use cases are supported.

Profiles are used for personalization and segmentation.