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Top 10 methods to track delayed conversion

Offline conversion tracking.

Saurav verma

January 23, 2009

Internet undoubtedly is the greatest source of information we will ever have and there is no stopping to it. It is also a viable source for commerce and is evident from the fact that e-commerce websites are mushrooming all over the World Wide Web. People buy online because it's simple, fast and easy. Sniffing this tremendous opportunity, many offline businesses have joined the online bandwagon and raked in revenue; something they failed to realize earlier. However, this multi channel presence gave birth to a precarious situation – tracking delayed conversion.

Numerous studies and polls have shown that people extensively use Internet as a research tool because of its ability to provide vast pool of information for every imaginable thing. But when it comes to buying people prefer to visit their nearby brick and motor shop. This is especially true for products and services that are characterized by long sales cycle and therefore lead to delayed conversion. “It's increasingly clear that consumers who search for products online will often visit brick-and-mortar locations to complete their purchase”, a statement made by John Miniati, Vice President, comScore. The statement clearly demonstrates that online research fuels offline sales.

The growth and rampant adoption of web analytics to measure online conversion and therefore justify the marketing spend is sufficient for pure plays like eBay and Amazon. However, multi channel businesses are only able to get a myopic view by tracking online conversion and miss out on the holistic picture. A study conducted by comScore revealed that 63% of the online visitors converted offline and thus knowing the full impact of the web channel on offline sales gained precedence. This cause is further compounded by the fact that online marketers are finding it seemingly difficult to justify their online marketing budget in absence of tangible results. Tracking offline conversion which results as a fallout of online marketing efforts thus became imperative.

The following methods can be adopted to accurately track the phenomenon of delayed conversion:

1. Phone number tracking: Setting up separate phone numbers for each referring source (i.e websites, affiliates and online campaigns) will enable you to link the sale to its point of origin.

1. Unique Pricing: Offering unique prices for each online marketing campaign will help you in ascertaining the source of sale and thus help in attributing it to the respective campaigns.

1. Reference codes: Generating different codes for individual products or services of each campaign is an effective way to track the source of sale. This would also help in allocating suitable marketing budget for campaigns depending on their performance.

1. Online order forms: Giving customers the option to print out their order forms online and collect the goods from the nearby store is another effective way of linking sales to its point of origin.

1. Discount coupons:  Offering printable discount coupons to online visitors to avail special in store offers and discounts can positively tie the sale to a particular online campaign. This will thus enable you to figure out which campaign is driving most of the offline sales.

1. In store surveys: Conducting in store surveys to establish the motivating element for each purchase will assist in linking purchases to online campaigns that triggered the buying decision.

1. Customer tagging: Customer tagging is by far the most sophisticated way of tracking delayed conversion. In this, each customer is assigned a unique ID and therefore their purchases can be tracked across various channels. This is accomplished by correlating the browser cookies with the unique ID.

1. A/B Testing: By studying the impact of online marketing campaigns on sales for a specific geographical location, by keeping other factors constant, is an efficient way of tracking the delayed conversion phenomena.

1. Pay per call services: Such services can work in tandem with your paid campaign (s) and can track conversion performance across various search engines. Service providers use many proprietary techniques to accomplish this task.

1. Call me back: Adding this feature to your website and embedding tracking codes will clearly establish the elusive link. Besides this, it will help your customers to seamlessly connect with your business.

Another intermediate method, which is seldom used, to track offline conversion is to run a trial campaign and then extrapolate the gathered data for future campaigns. Correlating online influence to offline sales can be attained in many more ways and is being offered by many modern statistical and analytical tools.

Tracking offline conversion is essential to realize the true ROI achieved from your online marketing efforts and should not be ignored.

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