Glossary of customer data terms
Short definitions of the terms used across MergeGuard and this site, from automatic merging to repeat purchase rate.
By MergeGuard team
Last updated
A
- Active profile
- In Klaviyo, a profile that can be emailed through Klaviyo, whatever its consent status. Suppressed profiles and profiles with only a phone number are not counted toward the email plan.
- Automatic merging
- A MergeGuard setting that merges strong matches without a confirmation for each group, and groups that need your judgment only if you add them. It stays off until you turn it on.
C
- Cohort
- A group of customers who placed their first order in the same period. Shopify’s cohort report groups customers this way and follows each group over time.
- Contact fix
- A suggested correction to a customer’s mistyped email, such as gmial.com to gmail.com, applied after you confirm it, or applied automatically for domain typos if you switch that on. A contact fix can be undone once.
- Customer lifetime value (CLV)
- The revenue, or profit, one customer brings your store over the whole relationship: either spend to date or a forecast of future spend. A simple estimate is revenue divided by customers.
- Customer merge
- Combining customer profiles into one, so all of one person’s orders, addresses, notes and tags sit on a single customer. Shopify merges two at a time, and a merge is permanent.
- Customer profile
- Shopify’s record of one customer, created when someone interacts with a store, for example by placing an order or abandoning a checkout. A profile holds one email address.
D
- Data minimisation
- A data protection principle: personal data should be adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary for the purposes it is processed for.
- Duplicate customer profile
- Two or more Shopify customer profiles that belong to the same person, each holding part of that person’s orders, contact details and marketing status.
E
- Email marketing consent
- A customer’s recorded agreement to receive marketing emails or SMS from your store, stored on their customer profile as subscribed or not subscribed.
F
- Family members
- In MergeGuard, profiles you marked as not a duplicate because they belong to relatives, such as partners or a parent and child. They often share an address or phone, and they stay separate customers.
G
- Guest checkout
- Buying from an online store without signing in to a customer account. The shopper types their contact details at checkout, and the store has only those details to recognize them by.
I
- Identity resolution
- Deciding which records, in one system or across several, belong to the same real person, using identifiers such as email, phone and address.
K
- Kept profile
- The customer profile that remains after a merge. Orders from the other profiles show under it, and it keeps the email, phone and address you choose.
L
- Lapsed customer
- A customer who hasn’t ordered in a while: longer than their own usual gap between orders. A shopper who still orders on another profile only looks lapsed.
- List hygiene
- Keeping an email list accurate: fixing mistyped addresses, spotting people who are on it twice, and leaving out addresses that bounce or never engage.
P
- Protected profile
- A customer profile that Shopify won’t merge, for example because it has ever had a subscription contract or has a store credit account. MergeGuard never merges protected profiles automatically.
R
- Repeat purchase rate
- The share of customers who placed two or more orders in a chosen period: customers with two or more orders, divided by customers with at least one order.
S
- Strong match
- A MergeGuard duplicate group whose details match closely. Groups where some details differ sit under Needs your judgment, where you decide.
- Subscription contract
- The agreement between a customer and a merchant for a subscription. Shopify won’t merge a profile that has, or has ever had, a subscription contract.