What is an offline conversion?

An offline conversion is a transaction that does not happen instantly, some also call it a delayed transaction.

A couple of examples:

• Applications – answer is given in a laters stage after det handler has approved or rejected the application.
• Opticians – customer books at time for a sight test, some are no shows, others can keep their existing glasses, but a few actually need a new strength in their glasses.
• Medical surgery – the application form is a booking to meet the nurse, after that a decision is made if surgery is needed or not

What all of the transactions above have incommon is that they all are posted mail or an API to a CRM or handling system the customer uses. For banks they are moved into their coresystem where tracking is almost impossible. Medical surgery have their own systems that are not online for the customers safety.

So what kind of figures do they track?

In most cases they are using Google analytics and look at the figures for form submissions.

Data quality

Then you have trouble with your statistics, they all show different numbers.

Google Ads have one number and Google Analytics has another then you check your CRM, a third set of numbers appear. Which numbers do you report to your leader?

The end of third-party cookies

Now you have even more challenges, how do you get your conversions data?

Case for offline conversion tracking

This customer is a consumer finance broker, they receive an application from their form on their webpage and send it to 8 different banks through an API, this is where we can say they are creating an offline conversion.