User Identification and Properties in Mobile SDK

Zeta’s Mobile SDK provides a flexible way to capture user properties that help personalize engagement, track behaviors, and optimize experiences. By default, the SDK supports identification and collection of standard properties (such as user ID, email, and phone number).

In addition, you can extend the SDK to collect custom user properties. This allows you to define and capture attributes relevant to your unique business and user context—going beyond the defaults to model what truly matters for your customer experience.

User Identification in ZMP

ZMP supports flexible user identification to ensure accurate profile creation and session association. When establishing the identification field from mobile app to ZMP, that will beome then the primary key field to update a profile’s record on. A user_id or email are the out of the box native identifiers, with the unique_client_id being a value that can be setup by your account team to allow for 1 or many other client identifiers to be used to create/update a profile with. When establishing the primary identifer field, it is important to note that a profile can have one or more identifiers, although it is most common to see only one across the following:

• user_id (“uid”)

• email

• unique_client_id (“uclid” for short)

A unique user in ZMP can be identified using:

User Identification Support Matrix

Standard User Properties

The SDK provides built-in support for collecting commonly used properties:

These properties are typically set during the user identification process.

For more details, see:

• User Identification in the iOS SDK

• User Identification in Android SDK

Collecting Custom Properties

Every business has unique attributes it needs to capture, such as loyalty tier, preferred language, subscription type, or even app-specific behaviors.

The SDK supports this through custom user property collection. You can define any key-value pair and attach it to the user profile.

// Setting standard properties
ZetaSDK.shared.setUserId("user_12345")
ZetaSDK.shared.setEmail("jane.doe@example.com")

// Setting custom properties
let customProperties: [String: Any] = [
    "loyalty_tier": "Gold",
    "preferred_language": "French",
    "subscription_status": "active"
]

ZetaSDK.shared.setCustomProperties(customProperties)

// Setting standard properties
[[ZetaSDK shared] setUserId:@"user_12345"];
[[ZetaSDK shared] setEmail:@"jane.doe@example.com"];

// Setting custom properties
NSDictionary *customProperties = @{
    @"loyalty_tier": @"Gold",
    @"preferred_language": @"French",
    @"subscription_status": @"active"
};

[[ZetaSDK shared] setCustomProperties:customProperties];

Client-Defined Unique Identifier (UCLID)

This allows clients to use their own stable customer identifiers (for example, customer_id, external_user_id, or account_id) to uniquely identify users within their ZMP namespace.

Key Characteristics

• Must be unique within the client’s namespace

• Acts as a primary identity key

• Can be used for profile creation and retrieval

• Used for session association

• Reduces dependency on email or Zeta-generated identifiers

This enables deterministic mapping between a client’s internal systems and ZMP profiles.

Identity Resolution Behavior

When a UCLID (or other supported identifier) is provided:

1. ZMP checks for an existing profile associated with that identifier.

2. If found → the session is attached to the existing profile.

3. If not found → a new profile is created.

4. A system-level identifier (BSIN) is generated internally for platform reference.

BSIN remains a system-generated, read-only identifier retrievable via the SDK

Best Practices

• Keep keys consistent: Define a schema for your property names (e.g., snake_case or camelCase).

• Use meaningful values: Ensure values are descriptive and can be used effectively in segmentation.

• Avoid sensitive data: Do not send sensitive identifiers such as passwords or financial details.

• Test before release: Validate custom properties in your staging environment before going live.