Offline conversions tracking explained

Using offline conversions tracking, which includes collecting and sending purchase data to ad platforms, can help create a customer profile and contribute to campaign optimization. In this blog post, we will explain offline conversion tracking, how it works, and provide guides on setting up offline conversion tracking for Google Ads, Meta Ads, and Microsoft Ads.

Tracking offline conversion allows the recording of customer conversions made by phone, in-store orders, offline deals etc. That means via all of the interactions made in the real world: your customer saw an ad and went into your store to make a purchase, for example.

Everything that occurred outside of your website is considered an offline conversion. 

There are various methods to track offline sales (manual upload of CSV file, built-in custom integrations, using connectors). We will focus on the working mechanism of the server GTM for offline conversion tracking.

After a user makes an offline purchase, a webhook is triggered, and the CRM sends a webhook to the server GTM containing the order details and user information. In the server GTM container, a Client listens for incoming webhook events. It processes the event to the corresponding tags (Facebook offline conversion tag, Google Ads offline conversion tag, Microsoft Ads offline conversion tag). After it, the conversion data is matched with online identifier (e.g., click ID) and forwarded to a platform such as Meta Ads, Google Ads, or Microsoft Ads.

Tracking offline conversions provides numerous benefits for businesses:

Offline conversion tracking can be applied for the following cases:

There are a few ways to set up offline conversion tracking:

Each approach has its drawbacks. Custom integrations require hiring developers to build a connection between your CRM and platform. Tools like Zapier are easier to set up, but they can become expensive, especially when dealing with a lot of events. Manual uploads involve significant effort to properly format and prepare the CSV file.

A new way of integrating offline conversion tracking is by using Stape's Conversion Tracking CRM apps or a server Google Tag Manager container.

Webhooks from your CRM or POS can be configured to send data to server Google Tag Manager, which distributes the information about offline conversions for analytics and ad network use.

The main two benefits of setting up offline conversions through sGTM are:

Stape has developed several CRM applications that can send data on lead status updates from CRM to the platform you need. The apps can also automatically create Customer Match lists in Google Ads, filling them in with data from CRM.

We currently support the following CRMs:

If your CRM isn't in the list of apps, you can use Stape's Offline Conversion tracking tags.

You can upload or send offline event data to Facebook using the Facebook Сonversions API. Meta matches this data to people who saw or clicked your ads. When a match is found, the action is counted as an offline conversion Facebook Ads event.

Read more on Facebook offline conversion using server GTM.

Google Ads offline conversion might not only be the way to track users who converted offline, but also an accurate way to track online conversion without relying on machine learning algorithms.

Google Ads offline conversion tag uses Firebase for authentication and the Google Ads developer's account. We simplified the process of creating these two entities for Stape users, which is why the list of needed things to set up Google Ads offline conversions depends on whether you are a Stape user.

You can set up offline conversion data into Microsoft Ads by uploading events that occurred outside of online interactions. When matched with users who interacted with Bing ads, these events are recorded as conversions. This process is similar to using Facebook's offline conversion API, with added details on setup requirements and additional parameters necessary for proper implementation.

By understanding how conversion tracking works and what data it can provide, businesses can make more informed decisions regarding their marketing efforts - and see a boost in sales as a result. If you're interested in implementing an offline conversion tracking solution for your business but aren't sure where to start, contact our team of experts at Stape support. We'd be happy to help you get started on the path to increased offline sales.