What is Offline Conversion Tracking?

Written By: eyos Marketing | Last Updated: September 2022

In 2020, it was estimated that the value of the global digital advertising and marketing market was $350 billion. And the market is growing by the day – at a considerable pace.

Recent statistics suggest that by 2026, the digital advertising market will be worth $786.2 billion. Yet far too many businesses remain unaware of the true ROI of their digital advertising spend.

While online conversions are increasingly easy to measure and track, offline purchases are far more difficult to attribute to particular marketing activities. But this is changing, as companies start to realise the importance of tracking offline conversions accurately. 

Although it’s far more difficult for businesses to measure offline conversions and track them back to the particular campaign a customer was influenced by, there are ways of keeping tabs on offline conversions. 

Tools provided by Facebook and Google, along with recent innovations like the use of digital receipts, give marketers the opportunity to analyse both online and offline conversions, compiling incredibly valuable data as they do so. 

Read on to find out more about how these tools work in offline conversion tracking. 

Why does offline conversion tracking matter?

Offline conversions matter to marketers just as much as online ones do. 

While it’s infinitely easier to track the buying journey that led to an online conversion, it’s also possible to do the same thing with an offline conversion – even if that purchase happens in person with no digital devices in sight. 

To accurately measure the effectiveness of any marketing campaign, teams need to make sure they’ve got the full picture. 

If offline conversions never come into the equation, marketers risk overlooking a significant stream of income. Calculations concerning the ROI of different marketing actions could therefore be incorrect, and any learnings about the effectiveness of different channels may well be skewed. 

How offline conversion tracking works

Highly specialised technology has been designed to make accurate offline conversion tracking possible.

Using offline conversion tracking, marketers can now get a much better understanding of what brought customers to their business, and how customers have interacted with the company prior to making a purchase. 

Technology provided by Facebook and Google works in a similar way. It involves the creation of unique IDs, which are generated every time a user clicks on an online advertisement. 

If a user who has previously clicked on one of these ads then goes on to make an offline purchase, and the customer provides the business with their information when they make that purchase, their user ID will show that the customer has interacted with the business online beforehand. 

Can offline conversion tracking be used to measure success?

Offline conversion tracking can be used to measure the success of marketing campaigns and accurately calculate ROI. Customer data can be taken from a company’s:

• CRM system and matched with information from Google.
• QR codes can be used to compile similar data.
• Digital receipts can help businesses match offline purchases with existing customer data.

Using these methods, companies can create better informed, smarter remarketing campaigns that target the customers most likely to go on to make a purchase. 

Offline conversion tracking using digital receipts

There are many benefits of using digital receipts software to track offline conversions. They’re far more environmentally friendly, they’re cost-effective and there are no potential health hazards to worry about. But they also make measuring offline conversions far easier. 

When a business switches to digital receipts, it gains access to a wealth of data on every offline purchase.

This data provides invaluable insights into customer behaviour, along with information on the success of different marketing activities and clues about different opportunities that could improve the customer experience. 

Can digital receipts solve the offline tracking problem?

Digital receipts alone won’t solve the problem of offline conversion tracking. However, they do provide companies with a new way of collecting customer information at the point of purchase.

That data can then be put to great use measuring the success of online campaigns.

At eyos, we partner with Google and Meta, enabling businesses to track and match customer data collected offline to the data attached to online actions, such as clicks on Google ads. 

If a user clicks an advertisement on Google, or interacts with an ad on social media, data is collected by Meta, along with a user ID and email ID. If the same customer goes on to purchase offline, their email ID can be collected, for the purposes of sending a digital receipt.

When this email is inputted into the system, it’ll immediately show that the customer previously interacted with an online campaign. 

Offline conversion tracking in action: New Look adopts digital receipts

Fashion brand New Look recently adopted digital receipts to improve both its sustainability and its ability to identify customers making offline purchases.

The company’s existing POS system was seamlessly integrated with technology from eyos, enabling sales representatives to tag transactions and payment modes to individual customers.  

New Look’s CRM system immediately started to receive huge amounts of data about the customers making offline purchases, which was quickly put to use to provide marketing professionals with a complete, 360-degree view of its omnichannel customers.

New Look was then able to link in-store data with Facebook and Google ad results, to track how each ad spend results in a purchase in-store. 

Have digital receipts been adopted in conversion tracking?

The use of digital receipts, together with the offline conversion tracking tools provided by Facebook and Google, made a huge difference. 

Since the rollout of digital receipts, New Look has been able to verify all captured email IDs, keeping the customer database clean and error-free. Data has also been used to connect and engage with customers long after they’ve left the store. 

Digital receipts were well received by New Look’s customers. The company reported that 84% of its customers who chose to receive a digital receipt then went on to sign up for its marketing updates.

This meant a significant rise in revenue for the brand, with over £34m worth of in-store revenue being attributed to Facebook and Instagram advertising campaigns.

The proportion of marketing budgets being spent on digital advertising is growing daily, yet far too many companies aren’t tracking the real impact of this spend as accurately as they could be. And as spend on digital ads increases, the importance of measuring the true ROI of this investment is rising too. 

Offline conversion tracking can be complex, particularly when we compare it to the ease with which online conversions are measured. But it’s a strategy that’s well worth exploring. And with eyos, you can do just that. 

Get advice on digital receipts today

Unlock the power of in-store data with eyos. Our software is used by retailers all over the world, to identify offline conversions using digital receipts. 

Our offline conversion tracking software makes it possible to connect 100% of in-store transactions into a platform of your choice. And that means huge amounts of valuable data at your fingertips – ready and waiting to be put to great use in your next marketing campaign. 

If you’d like to find out more about digital receipts and how they work, get in touch with our team. 

Additional Reading

What Are Digital Receipts?

The Value of Digital Receipts for Small Businesses

The Environmental Cost of Paper Receipts

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