Offline Conversion Tracking

Recent days the marketing spending is increasing as there is an increase in on-line marketing competition. Tracking the conversion plays a vital role in finding ROI on various marketing activities.

Most of the transactions are happening off-line and this makes us difficulty in calculating our ROI. When we have a definite sales starting point and a well defined process for the flow until the conversion is happening, there will not be any issue in calculating the ROI. Else it is going to be a tough task in getting proper conversion in an effective way.

In our case, our product can be downloaded freely from website (online) and most of the conversions are off-line i.e. either through phone or through resellers. It is very difficult to calculate the ROI. Measuring off-line conversions and proving on paper that the online marketing triggered the off-line conversion is difficult, because we can’t often directly measure the process from start to conversion.

Methods of tracking off-line conversions

Simple method of off-line tracking

The easiest technique is to make an assumption based on a change in sales. If sales go up after an online advertising campaign, then we can assume it’s due to that campaign. This method isn’t so much of a method as a practice.

Intermediate Methods of Off-line Tracking

Intermediate method for tracking off-line sales is by gathering some data in a trial program and then extrapolating it to future sales or a larger campaign.

Other options that give off-line conversion include the tried-and-true coupon code or special offer codes. This method relies on the customer entering a special identifier that both gives them a discount and also allows us to track where the customer came from.

Advanced Off-line Conversion Tracking Techniques

Customer Tagging

In this method the once the customer reaches the website a customer Id or an order ID or a key will be given to the customer. At every stage of the communication the customer has to be asked for the key and when he get converted, using the key we can track back the history of access details of the customer.

Unique phone numbers for referrers.

Another advanced method for tracking off-line conversions is the use of persistent unique phone numbers based on referrers.

This approach can be used to track off-line conversions from a variety of lead generation sources. JavaScript on the landing pages identifies the source of the referral and displays a unique phone number. The visitor is also tagged with a cookie, so as that visitor explores the site the same unique phone number is consistently displayed. Even if the customer bookmarks the site and returns at a later date he will view the same telephone number.

Call tracking of keyword-driven traffic.

Sophisticated call tracking tools provide the ability to track off-line conversions with a similar high level of detail as online analytics. Obviously, asking a customer what search phrase they used to find our site online won’t likely be effective. An automated service is the best approach if we need that fine-grain concentration of detail when tracking conversions.