Identified User
A user whose identity is known through a unique identifier such as an email address, user ID, or account number, allowing their behavior to be tracked across sessions and devices.
Also known as: known user, authenticated user
Why It Matters
Identified users are the foundation of people-first analytics. Once you know who someone is, you can build a complete behavioral profile that spans sessions, devices, and channels. This transforms analytics from aggregate statistics into individual-level understanding.
Identification unlocks personalization, accurate attribution, and true lifecycle analysis. You can see how a specific customer behaved before purchasing, what features they adopted, when they started disengaging, and how they responded to interventions. This level of detail is impossible with anonymous aggregate data.
Identified users also enable cross-device tracking. The same person might research on their phone during lunch, compare options on a work laptop, and purchase from their tablet at home. Without identification, that looks like three separate visitors. With it, it is one coherent journey.
Industry Applications
A pet supply retailer identifies users when they create an account or join the loyalty program. Identified users show 3x higher lifetime value than anonymous purchasers, providing strong justification for investing in account creation and loyalty incentives.
A collaboration tool identifies users at signup and tracks their entire lifecycle from trial through expansion. By analyzing the complete identified-user journey, they discover that users who connect to Slack within the first week retain at 2x the rate.
How to Track in KISSmetrics
Call KISSmetrics identify with a unique, stable identifier (email address or internal user ID) as soon as the user authenticates or provides their information. KISSmetrics will automatically merge any previous anonymous activity with the identified profile. Use consistent identifiers across all your systems (website, app, email, CRM) to ensure a unified profile.
Common Mistakes
- -Using unstable identifiers that change (session IDs, temporary tokens) instead of permanent ones
- -Identifying users too late in the journey, losing pre-identification behavioral context
- -Not handling identity conflicts when the same person uses multiple email addresses
- -Exposing personally identifiable information in analytics dashboards accessible to the entire organization
Pro Tips
- +Identify users at the earliest possible moment - email capture, social login, or newsletter signup
- +Use internal user IDs as the primary identifier and store email as a user property for flexibility
- +Set up identification on both client-side and server-side to ensure no events are missed
- +Regularly audit your identified user count against your actual customer count to catch identity resolution gaps
Related Terms
Anonymous User
A website or product visitor whose identity is unknown, typically tracked via a cookie or device identifier until they provide identifying information like an email address.
User Alias
A method for linking multiple identifiers to the same person, such as connecting an anonymous cookie ID with an email address, or merging two separate accounts that belong to the same individual.
People Tracking
An analytics approach that ties every event and interaction to an individual person rather than to anonymous sessions or pageviews, enabling full lifecycle analysis and person-level insights.
Identity Graph
A database that maps and connects all known identifiers for a single person - such as email addresses, device IDs, cookie IDs, and phone numbers - into a unified profile that represents one real human.
User Property
A persistent attribute attached to a user profile that describes who they are, such as their subscription plan, account creation date, company size, or lifetime revenue.
See Identified User in action
KISSmetrics tracks every user across sessions and devices so you can measure what matters. Start free - no credit card required.