What actually is ... Offline Conversion Tracking?

Conversion tracking is the recording of all activities or purchases of a user interested in buying for the purpose of marketing optimization. If the user buys online, cookie-based tracking tools enable simple and clear measurement. However, if the user merely obtains information on the website and then makes an offline purchase in the specialist store around the corner, a unique identifier must be sought in order to be able to assign the two actions to each other. Measuring these offline purchases is called offline conversion tracking.

An example: A user comes to a website after clicking on an ad and downloads a personal voucher code. As soon as the voucher is redeemed in the store, the information from the POS system (voucher has been redeemed) can be linked to the click tracking data (voucher has been downloaded). In the case of Google AdWords, for example, the GCLID (Google Click ID) is used for this.

Term explained by Markus Goldmann, who works in Business Development at Goldbach Interactive.