Facebook advertisers are always looking for ways to improve their campaign efficiency. One way they do this is by enhancing conversions tracking, which has not been an easy task in recent years.
Since the rise of tracking restrictions, implementing Facebook Conversions API (which sends data to FB servers from your server) is the most popular way of improving FB tracking. We already have a detailed blog post on how to set up FB CAPI.
You can also use Facebook’s older way of sending server events, the offline conversions. This solution relies on first-party data that cannot be affected by tracking restrictions or short-lived cookies.
This blog post will discuss the recent tag for the server Google Tag Manager container - Facebook offline conversions tag. It allows sending data to FB offline conversions using the server Google Tag Manager container.
Facebook offline conversions is a great way to track actions that people take off your site, such as in-store purchases or by phone.
You can upload offline event data to Facebook, which will match events to people who saw or clicked FB ads. If FB can identify a person and match them with the ad, it will count the event as a conversions towards the ad campaign.
Nowadays, the conversions funnel is complicated and includes many touchpoints (both click-through and view-through). For this reason, some marketers choose offline conversions as their second angle of analysis when evaluating results from Facebook campaigns, both offline and online.
There are several ways how advertises approach setting up FB offline conversions:
Each of these methods has its disadvantages. To implement custom integration, you need to hire developers who will create a connector for your CRM (or POS, etc.) and FB offline conversions. With tools like Zapier, it might be easy to set up, but the price will be high, especially if there are many events. With manual upload, a lot of work must be done when preparing a CSV file.
Setting up FB offline conversions using the sGTM tag might be the best solution for those already familiar with server-side tagging. Setting up won’t take long, and you can save money by not using connectors or hiring developers.
If you are unfamiliar with server-side tagging, I highly suggest starting to implement this new technology sooner than later. The idea of server-side tagging has been around for some time, but it's only recently becoming more popular. This technology is designed for tracking that relies on first-party cookies and first-party data, making it more secure for your and your customers.
Two essential things that need to be done before setting up ss tagging using sGTM are creating a server GTM container and delivering data to sGTM (there are several ways of sending data, the most popular are GA4, DataTag/DataClient, Webhooks, etc.).
There might be multiple reasons to use Facebook offline conversions.
But if you have already implemented FB CAPI? Should you consider implementing FB offline conversions using sGTM?
I would suggest doing so. The main reason is that the more data about customers you send to Facebook, the more information is fed to FB machine learning algorithms that select who should see your FB ads. This may have a positive effect on the results of FB ads.
What about FB offline conversions and iOS tracking restrictions? There is no official documentation on how FB offline conversion affects those who opted out of tracking on their mobile phones. Below I will describe my opinion on how FB processes such data.
This guide will use a CRM webhook to trigger FB offline conversions tags. When a user on iOS devices who opted out from tracking makes a purchase, FB pixel won't record this event (at least they should not track it following user privacy policy rules).
After a user makes a purchase, CRM sends a webhook to sGTM with all the information about order details and user information. Once sGTM receives this data, it sends a request to FB offline conversions. In the webhook data, there will be no identification of whether the user allowed/not allowed FB to track them. In theory, this means that if FB can match this user with the person who saw your ad, the offline conversions will be counted towards the result of the FB campaign.
Another massive benefit of FB offline conversions is that it’s still eligible for a 28-day attribution window. While with FB pixel or FB CAPI, the maximum you can get is 7-day attribution.
Below, we will consider setting up webhooks in WordPress using Stape’s plugin for WordPress. If you are using another content management system, you will need to do the same - configure the webhook.
1.1 Go to the “Settings” section → “Webhooks” tab.
Enable the “Send webhooks to server GTM container” checkbox and add “Server GTM container URL”.
1.2 To find the server GTM container URL, go to the Stape admin → open container → copy “Domain name” in the section “Domains (Tagging Server URLs)”.
Please note:
Example:
https://ss.wp-demo.stape.dev/webhook
1.3 Enable checkboxes “Purchase webhook” or “Refund webhook” if it works for your case. Click “Save changes”.
2.1 Open Debug and Preview Mode in server GTM → click on three dots in the upper right corner → “Send requests manually”.
2.2 Copy X-Gtm-Server-Preview HTTP header.
2.3 Go to the Stape admin account → Power-ups → click “Configure” next to sGTM Preview header config.
2.4 Enable the power-up and paste the X-Gtm-Server-Preview HTTP header from server GTM.
2.5 Click “Save Changes”.
3.1 Download Data Client from GitHub.
3.2 Go to server GTM → Templates → Client Templates → click “New”. Import the template you downloaded from GitHub.
3.4 Go to the “Clients” section → click “New” → select “Data Client” as Client Type.
Make sure you added the path of the webhooks you configured when creating a webhook in the section “Accepted Path Settings.” In our case, it is “/webhook.”
This way, the Data Client will listen to all requests containing “/webhook” and retrieve data from this request.
1. In the server GTM, go to the section “Templates” → Tag Templates section → Search Gallery.
Add “Facebook Conversions API”.
2. Go to the Tags section → click “New” → select “Facebook Conversions API” as Tag Configuration.
3. Configure the tag.
3.1 Choose “Event Name Setup Method”:
3.2 Choose the “Event Type” and “Action Source” from the list that fits your case.
3.3 Add “API Access Token” and “Facebook Pixel ID”.
To find “Facebook Pixel ID” go to your Business Manager → Events Manager → Data Sources → copy Dataset ID.
To find “API Access Token” scroll down and find “Generate access token”.
That’s the basic tag configuration if you want to send users or some custom data, you can set it up in the sections of the tag.
Below is an example of Facebook Conversions API Tag configuration:
4. Add the trigger.
Trigger Type: Custom Event
Event name: specify your event name (in our case, it is “purchase)
This trigger fires on: Some Custom Events
Condition: Client Name equals Data Client
1. Open Preview and Debug Mode in server GTM.
2. Go to WordPress Setting tab and click on “Send test webhook”.
3. See the webhook in Preview and Debug Mode.
Facebook offline conversions is one of the ways to boost your FB campaign results and improve attribution. Though offline conversions only are not enough for proper FB tracking and audience collection, it might be an excellent addition to your existing FB pixel tracking and FB CAPI.
Using FB offline conversions tag for the sGTM container, you can now set up offline conversions easier and cheaper than before. Remember to follow offline conversions best practices to improve the efficiency of your setup.
If you need help setting up ss tagging, we are here to help!
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