Aliases

Converge excels at matching events across browser sessions and your server-side data. This is all possible through aliases. Your customer is linked to multiple aliases, i.e. multiple identifiers for the same customer.

Converge uses the customer’s browser session cookie as the default alias. When you add something as an alias, you are telling Converge that this alias is a unique identifier for this profile across datasources.

As an example, Converge can merge a profile of browser events (e.g. Pageviews) with a profile with backend events (e.g. Started Subscription) if they have the same email.

Other aliases that are useful:

• cart_token
• checkout_token: this is absolutely necessary if your checkout lives on a different domain than your storefront token.
• customer_id

cvg({
  method: "track",
  eventName: "Subscribed To Newsletter",
  properties: {},
  profileProperties: {},
  aliases: ["urn:email:john.smith@apple.com"],
});

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Aliases for re-identification

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Default cookie behavior

Many browsers wipe all third-party cookies and all cookies that are set browser-side through JavaScript. For example, Safari will wipe all of those cookies after 7 days.

This significantly impacts the accuracy of multi-touch attribution. Observe in the graph below how a customer who comes to your site in an interval longer than 8 days cannot be re-identified.

For a full list of browsers and their cookie lifetimes, see here

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Server-side first-party cookies

The reliable way to re-identify users over longer periods of time is through server-side first-party cookies. As illustrated in the graph below, these do reliably re-identify users.

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Leveraging server-side first-party cookies within Converge

By using a server-side first-party cookie as an alias, Converge can:

1. Reliably re-identify your customers for multi-touch attribution. This is especially important for brands where the buying cycle is longer than the cookie lifetime of 7 days.
2. Extend the lifetime of third-party cookies: Converge stores third-party cookies that are relevant for your Connections in its profile properties
   . Converge can then retrieve these third-party cookies when it recognizes a customer after the 7-day period.

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Setting up a server-side first-party cookie

If you are using one of the Converge prebuilt integrations (e.g. for Shopify) then you are likely already using a server-side first-party cookie. Check out your specific integration documentation to verify.

If you are integrating Converge JS on your website, then you will need to implement this directly yourself.

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Installation Instructions

 // server.js

 const express = require('express');
 const cookieParser = require('cookie-parser');
 const uuid = require('uuid');

 const app = express();
 const PORT = 3000;

 app.use(cookieParser());

 // Middleware to generate and set unique visitor cookie if not already set
 app.use((req, res, next) => {
 if (!req.cookies.visitorId) {
     const visitorId = uuid.v4(); // Generate a unique visitor ID
     res.cookie('mystore_uid', visitorId, { maxAge: 365 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000, httpOnly: true });
 }
 next();
 });

 // Route to serve Next.js application
 app.use('/', require('./frontend'));

 app.listen(PORT, () => {
 console.log(`Server is running on port ${PORT}`);
 });

import { useEffect } from "react";
import Cookies from 'js-cookie';

const MyApp = ({ Component, pageProps, router }) => {
useEffect(() => {
    const visitorId = Cookies.get('mystore_uid');
    const handleRouteChange = (url) => {
    cvg({method: "track", eventName: "$page_load", aliases: [`urn:mystore_uid:${visitorId}`]})
    };
    router.events.on("routeChangeComplete", handleRouteChange);
    return () => {
    router.events.off("routeChangeComplete", handleRouteChange);
    };
}, []);
return <Component {...pageProps} />;
};
export default MyApp;