Tracking offline data
When a user visits your website, Yandex.Metrica collects information about the user's characteristics, behavior on the site, and goals completed. However, your business may have other important data collected offline related to payments, calls, and so on. You can transmit data about customers and their actions (for instance, orders and calls) to Yandex.Metrica, link the behavior of your customers on the website to their actions offline, and use this data in your ad campaigns.
Transmitting offline data can help you to:
- Connect users' online and offline history to get a better picture of the conversion funnel.
- Use offline data for advertising: create segments for advertising in Yandex.Direct, for example, target new users with look-alike technology. You can also include customers who didn't visit your site before making a purchase.
- Select order creation or order payment as your campaign goal.
You can transmit the following types of offline data:
Information about customers and orders from your CRM. This information can be used to:
- Compare the effectiveness of ad channels in attracting customers.
- Optimize ad campaigns for creating orders or paying for orders.
- Build customer segments for ads in Yandex.Direct. When creating segments, you can use any data about customers (for example, orders) and their behavior on the site. For example, you can collect a segment of customers who visited the site, but didn't purchase anything for more than six months. Segments can be used for targeting ads, searching for similar users, and adjusting bids.
Data can be transmitted through the Yandex.Metrica API.
Offline conversions of site users. For instance, information about orders that were created on the site and paid for in the office. You can send the data in a CSV file on the Yandex.Metrica website, or by using the API.
Information about calls. This information is usually available from the call tracking service your company uses. More information about transmitting data.
- How Yandex.Metrica links offline data to sessions
- Recording offline conversions
- Questions and answers
How Yandex.Metrica links offline data to sessions
To link offline data to site users and their sessions, Yandex.Metrica uses the following data:
Unique website user ID created automatically by Yandex.Metrica.
Used for tracking offline conversions and calls and transmitting user parameters as well as customer and order data from the CRM.
You can use the ClientID if your website doesn't have a dedicated ID framework or you don't need one. To get the IDs, use the getClientID method.
We also recommend that you send ClientIDs along with the customer data from the CRM if you are going to use the offline data from the CRM for end-to-end analytics reports or campaign goals. In this case, Yandex.Metrica reports and Yandex.Direct campaigns will have all comprehensive data from the CRM.
The website user ID assigned by the website owner (for example, via CRM).
Used for tracking offline conversions and calls and transmitting user parameters. It's not used for linking customer data and order data from the CRM.
It's a good idea to use the UserID if your website already has its own user ID framework (for example, based on usernames) and you actively manage this kind of data. If you want Yandex.Metrica to detect unique users through your dedicated framework, you need to link the UserID to ClientID with the setUserID method.
Your website user ID is associated with the ClientID of a particular user only if the setUserID method was called during the user's session. To get more complete statistics, we recommend waiting some time until a larger volume of data is transmitted to Yandex.Metrica.
The ID of a click on a Yandex.Direct ad assigned by Yandex.Direct. Use this ID if you want to directly link your conversions to ad clicks. For more information, see Conversion tracking with yclid.
The customer's email address. It's used only for linking customer data and order data from the CRM.
The customer's phone number. It's used only for linking customer data and order data from the CRM.
Recording offline conversions
The Recording offline conversions option specifies the time interval during which session data can be supplemented with conversion information that you transmit to Yandex.Metrica.
In some cases, there is quite a long delay between the session and the conversion, like if the conversion action is performed offline. This is why the conversion tracking period is 21 days. This means that data about a conversion is added to a session if 21 days or less have passed from the user's last session on the website to processing the file with the conversion data.
Offline conversions will only be added to sessions that take place after the option is enabled. The time interval for changing session information increases incrementally. On the day after enabling this option, the interval is one day, and it keeps getting longer until it reaches a maximum of 21 days.
A conversion will not be linked to a session if the conversion or your transmission of conversion data takes place more than 21 days after the session on the website.
If you use different IDs, conversion attribution methods will differ:
- ClientID and UserID. Offline conversions and calls are added to the user's session that directly preceded them. For example, the user had three sessions: March 1, March 5, and March 11. On March 10, this user paid for an order at a retail store, and this date was registered in the CRM. On March 20, the manager sent the data to Yandex.Metrica. The order paid for on March 10 was added to the customer's website session as of March 5.
yclid. Conversions will be added to a session initiated through an ad linked to the transferred yclid.
Questions and answers
- Is it possible to track a conversion if the user viewed my page but made an offline order?
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Tracking offline conversions can be more complicated. If you want to link an online event to an offline one, you first need to combine their entities. For example, if your online action is an order, then the link would be an order number, and if it's a call, then your link would be a phone number. If you want to link a website session with an offline action, you can display unique promo codes to users that they could then show in the store.
