Offline data i.e. interactions that happen away from the website present invaluable information to marketers. Without this data, marketers are oblivious to which of their initiatives led to an offline sale. Was it a Google Ad, an email or perhaps a blog post? Google Analytics offline conversion tracking solves this problem. It marries both online and offline data to provide marketers with a 360-degree view over their marketing activities.
To show you why offline conversion tracking is useful, we’ve drafted a little scenario below, in which a gentleman named Greg purchased a car.
Online: Greg enters a query into Google and then clicks on CarCo’s ad
Online: After browsing the website, he decides to inquire about two models via email, being the Coupe and Hatchback.
Offline: A representative calls Greg via the number he left in the email. Greg is then invited to attend an exhibition at their dealership.
Online: Greg signs up to attend the exhibition via an online form.
Offline: At the exhibition, Greg speaks to some CarCo representatives and wishes to purchase the Hatchback.
Offline: He heads to the dealership’s sales office and makes a purchase on the spot.
Without offline conversion tracking, CarCo would only be able to see half the picture. With this information though, Toyota is able to determine which content led to a conversion.
Over time, CarCo could determine which content leads to the most conversions and thus invest their resources accordingly. To track offline conversions with Google Analytics, you need a CRM i.e. Salesforce. From there, there are three methods that you could employ, being:
- Manually importing data through the GA Data Import feature
- Utilizing the GA Measurement Protocol
- Automatically connecting CRM and Google Analytics data using a tool called GA Connector
1. GA Data Import
The GA Data Import feature allows you to take data from external sources i.e. a CRM and bring it into Google Analytics. By importing your data into Google Analytics, you get to see your offline data, as well as your online data.
You can import user data, campaign data, content data, cost data, product data, refund data and custom data. To perform the Data Import for Google Analytics, you need to follow these six steps:
- Choose what data you would like to import
- Create custom dimensions or Metrics, if necessary
- Create the data set
- Create and export the CSV
- Upload the data manually via Google Analytics
- View the data in reports
You can follow Google’s full six-step process here.
2. GA Measurement Protocol
The Google Analytics Measure Protocol prevents you from being limited by Google Analytics’ and Google Tag Manager’s capabilities. It allows you to measure how users interact with your business from just about any environment – that includes offline. While this is a very powerful method to marry your online and offline data, it does require the help of a developer. If you’re after an introduction to this feature then this is a good place to start.
3. GA Connector
To track Google Analytics offline sales easily and automatically, we recommend a tool we developed called GA Connector. It seamlessly integrates your Google Analytics and CRM data in just 3 simple steps. Furthermore, you don’t have to repeat the process every time you have new data, as with the methods above.
Here’s what you need to do to get seamless offline data conversion tracking going using GA Connector:
- Sign up for a free 30-day trial
- Integrate your CRM and Google Analytics by following the provided steps
- Create powerful attribution reports that link your offline sale to its source
