Ways of offline conversion tracking

Conversion tracking is an incredibly powerful tool that provides insights concerning customer behavior, website performance, and the overall effectiveness of marketing campaigns - all highly valuable information when making informed decisions.

If you own a website, there are a lot of ways to keep track of what's going on: you can use different analytical platforms that gather all data that is needed for you to understand if you're doing a good job with the site. 

But what if you would like to concentrate on your physical shop? What if you are tired of third-party cookies and different tracking restrictions and want to increase your offline sales? 

In this blog post, we will explain offline conversion tracking and how with the server GTM you can track your clients' actions in the most accurate way.

What is offline conversion trackingCopy link to this section

Offline conversion tracking 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. 

The advantages of offline conversion compared to online conversionCopy link to this section

Offline conversion is often considered to be better than online conversion for a variety of reasons. 

For one, it provides more accurate data about customers and their purchasing habits. This can include what they buy, where they purchase it, how long it takes them to make a decision and how much they spend. Information can then be used to inform marketing strategies or adjust pricing accordingly.

Additionally, offline conversions are also better at measuring ROI. Offline conversions provide real-time insights which help to understand exactly how much your ads lead to sales in stores or through phone orders. This helps to understand how effective campaigns are and if you need to tweak anything to increase ROI further.

Offline conversions are great for gathering qualitative data as well as quantitative data. For example, businesses can use surveys or interviews with store personnel who interacted with customers to learn more about shopper experience, interests and feedback on products or services. This helps businesses improve their services for a better customer experience. 

How was offline conversion set up beforeCopy link to this section

Setting up offline conversion tracking can be a difficult process. With third-party cookies being blocked and other tracking restrictions, it can be hard to accurately track conversions from different sources.

One of the biggest challenges associated with setting up offline conversion tracking is getting access to the right data. This can be complicated because many organizations lack the resources and infrastructure needed to track online and offline data sources in one place. Additionally, there may be additional privacy concerns that must be taken into consideration when collecting customer data. As such, many businesses choose to work with a third-party vendor that specializes in providing tools for accurate measurement of offline conversions. 

Another challenge when setting up offline conversion tracking is being able to accurately attribute a user's journey between multiple devices and channels. It requires a business to have an understanding of the customer's full path-to-purchase journey, which involves capturing information from both digital and physical touchpoints. Without this data, it may be difficult for businesses to determine which channels are performing well and which ones need further optimization efforts. 

And last challenge is the technical implementation of offline conversion tracking. The most popular and easiest way to track offline conversions is manually uploading them using a CSV file. Although manual upload is the most widespread and least technically challenging approach, it requires an inordinate amount of time. A daunting task lies ahead: collecting data relevant to conversations, organizing them according to network requirements, then importing – all without any real-time updating available during this laborious process.

Another popular way is to either use a pre-built connector or develop your own solution for integrating offline conversions. This one is easy to use and gives instant updates. But the disadvantage is that it might cost a lot, both your own solution and the pre-maid tool.  

Set up offline conversion with server Google Tag ManagerCopy link to this section

A new way of integrating offline conversion tracking is by using server Google Tag Manager container. This integration is possible because sGTM can directly communicate with marketing or analytics platforms API. 

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:

• works in real-time, no manual work is required.
• costs way less than building your own integration or using a specialized connector.

Stape can offer the following ways of configuration: 

Facebook offline conversionCopy link to this section

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 conversion towards the ad campaign. 

The logic of the FB offline conversion tag is exceptionally similar to the stape's FB conversion API tag. But there are some additional parameters and steps required to set up FB offline conversion tag that are covered in our article.

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.

Google Ads offline conversionCopy link to this section

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.

• Allows you to track and attribute sales to Adword campaigns.
• Allows feeding 1st party data to Google and attribute conversions of those users who either opted out of tracking or used adBlockers.
• Allows seeing behavior conversion tracking without event modeling data.

Google Ads offline conversion tag uses Firebase for authentication and 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. The detailed information you can find here. 

Microsoft Ads (Bing) Offline Conversion trackingCopy link to this section

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, which are covered in detail in the article.

ConclusionCopy link to this section

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.