Using Ruler without capturing PII data

Ruler can match conversions and revenue back to marketing activity without you sending us personal data such as email addresses or phone numbers. Those are just two of several identifiers we can match on.

Can I use Ruler without sending email addresses or phone numbers?

Yes. Email and phone are two of several identifiers Ruler can use to link an offline conversion or revenue record back to an online journey. If you'd rather not share personal data, you can match on one of the non-personal identifiers below instead.

What non-personal identifiers can Ruler match on?

• Ruler ID (RaId) - Ruler's own first-party visitor identifier, assigned when someone lands on your tracked site. If you capture and store this at the point of lead capture (for example in a hidden form field or in your CRM), you can send it back when uploading a conversion. Because it's Ruler's own identifier, it gives a clean, direct match. Please see our guide on how to capture the RAID on your the website here.
  
• GA4 Client ID - Ruler pairs its own identifier with the Google Analytics client ID on each tracked session, so you can match using the Google client ID instead of personal data. This works well if your systems already stores the GA4 client ID. Note - when sending it to Ruler, drop the GA1.1 prefix - for example, GA1.1.101961087.1756204614 is sent as 101961087.1756204614.
• Your own unique ID - If you have an internal, non-personal identifier such as an order, booking or account number captured on your site as part of the web conversion tracked (web form/online checkout etc), this can be registered as a matchable identifier and used when uploading conversions. This one needs a short one-off setup on our side first, so let us know early if you'd like to use it.

How does the matching work?

Ruler must either track the identifier on your website or have it sent to us as part of an offline conversion request. This is what allows us to store the identifier against the user journey and tie it to any offline CRM activity.

What happens if no consistent identifier is captured online that lives in my CRM?

Ruler will still be able to track the conversion event on the website, however matching to offline data from your CRM requires a consistent matching value. Without this you are unable to tie the online and offline data together from a deterministic approach.

Do I need to flag with Ruler I will not be using PII data?

It is worth flagging with your onboarding manager so we can help guide you on the best approach to tracking. If you are using a unique ID we will also need to configure this as a unique identifier on your account to allow for matching.

Which identifier should I use?

It depends on what you're already able to capture in your setup. If you can store Ruler's visitor identifier, that gives the cleanest match. If your systems already hold the GA4 client ID, that's an easy option. If you'd rather rely on an internal reference such as an order or booking number, we can set that up for you.

How to send the identifier to Ruler?

If you using our API to send data to us, depending on the values you send you would use the following API request field to map to each identifier type

Are any Identifiers required for MMM?

No, MMM only requires no PII or unique identifiers. Only deterministic based attribution (MTA) requires a consistent identifier to allow for deterministic matching.

If you have any questions or queries on tracking PII data, or unique identifiers, please get in touch with a member of the team today at [email protected]