Profound’s “born in the cloud” Entity Domain Resolution service: Domain Append is the first and best in class platform for what it does: Maps the parent Domain to each B2B record in your global database. The matched Domain combined with the Match Flag string delivers a transparent and maintainable Domain matching outcome while also validating your B2B data in the process. Why is the Domain important?
- The Domain is a decentralized global standard which uniquely identifies a business at the organizational level.
- It provides an open source non-proprietary match key that defends against vendor lock-in
- Enables new revenue opportunities with, for example, digital audience building
- Creates unlimited matching and B2B data enrichment possibilities to unlock your database’s true value.
- Maps each record in your global B2B database to the accurate Domain at scale.
- Verifies the accuracy of the 7 key data elements in your input record with the Match Flag string.
- Battle tested by leading B2B data companies processing hundreds of millions of records per month.
- Tracks changes to those addresses in your database published on each Domain’s website.
- Dynamic process. Refresh monthly, quarterly, or at any cadence required.
- Tens of billions of records matched. Over six years of operational success.
Despite these benefits, many global companies have poor Domain coverage and quality. And for those companies that do have good coverage of Domain, there is typically no method to validate that their matching is correct, or to maintain Domain quality when Domains frequently redirect, stop working, or change ownership.
- Required: The input file must contain Company name and country at a minimum. We advise a unique record ID as well.
- Address, City, State/Province, Zip/Postal, and Phone where available greatly improve match quality. Each of these attributes has a reserved position in the Match Flag string.
- Optional: Include the Domain tied to your B2B record where available. We will provide a report that tells you how many of your domains agreed with ours, and how many did not. You can then review the disagreements and conclusively determine Domain Append’s level of quality.
Once the batch process completes, we return your full unmodified Input file along with the Parent Domain, the Match Flag string and Match Scores. Output files are typically posted to cloud storage for automated retrieval. We support sFTP and API integrations as well.
Match Flag String:
Many businesses publish their physical locations on website pages including the Contact Us, Directions, Locations, and other versions of the “Store Near Me” page. Domain Append dynamically matches your input file record by record and checks if that location is published on the candidate website or not.
Each of the 7 key attributes of your input record are evaluated with the address found on these contact_us pages and builds a Match Flag string composed of each matching input element.
The 7 character Match Flag string can have a “T” for True (the attribute in your record matched) an “F” for False (the attribute in your record did not match). Additionally there is “P” for Partial match such as phone number, where the Area code and prefix match, but the last four of the phone number do not. Finally, if the input element was not provided in the input data, e.g. there was no phone number on that record, then a dash ”-“ will be returned in that respective Match Flag position indicating that no match was possible for that element because it was not included in the input record.
In this sample above you can see the Match Flag “TTTTTTT” indicates that all 7 input elements were found published on the business’ own website—the ultimate source of truth. This is a high confidence match of your input record to this domain. This match serves as a new baseline. On a future refresh, if we observe this Match Flag string to change, then this business likely updated their address on their website. This enables a significant B2B database maintenance opportunity when scaled to millions of records.
To further ensure the highest accuracy matches, additional filters on the Match Flag string can be run for maximum data integrity. The balance between high accuracy and coverage is largely use-case specific. For example, for marketing, Domains with a low confidence score or a low quality Match Flag string may be acceptable to use. But for Credit, Risk, and Fraud applications, a very high Match Confidence score may be required. The Match Flag strings provide the “knobs and dials” to fine tune your acceptance criteria.
Contact us to get started leveraging the matching power of Domain to your global B2B database.