Importing offline data

When users visit your site, Yandex Metrica automatically collects data on how they interact with the site’s pages and the key actions they perform on these pages.

However, your business’s sales funnel may extend beyond on-site actions and include phone calls, payment upon delivery by courier, contract signing after negotiations with a client, payment at an offline sales outlet, etc. Data on such actions (e.g., paid orders, calls, chats in messengers) can be sent to Yandex Metrica to link your customers’ behavior on your site with their off-site actions and use this data for advertising.

What you can do with the help of offline data

Sending offline data helps site owners solve a wide range of tasks. Here are some of them:

Build end-to-end analytics

By sending the data on offline actions to Yandex Metrica (either on actual sales or transaction stages from CRM), you can link them with users’ online history on your site, obtaining an analysis of the full sales funnel.

Optimize advertising in Yandex Direct for offline conversions

Create goals for confirmed user actions and use them to optimize advertising for paid orders, signed contracts, receiving payment after receiving a request on the site, etc.

Create segments

Create user segments based on offline data and look-alike user identification. Segments can also include customers who didn’t visit the site before making a purchase.

Get more accurate data

Minimize discrepancies between the data from Yandex Metrica and the information from your CRM system or sales department. Offline conversions can also help when your clients pay for a purchase on the site through acquiring but do not return to the site after payment (do not reach the "Thank you for your order" page).

Classify form submissions

Not all form submissions and placed orders on the site result in payments. Send data on "good" submissions to identify your most effective sales channels.

Build ROPO reports

If you have physical stores, you can send sales data from those locations to measure the impact of online advertising on your offline sales.

What offline data you can send

Offline conversions of site users

You can supplement the data about user sessions by recording conversions of the JavaScript event type sent after the session. This allows you to segment and analyze off-site user actions, as well as use conversions that accurately reflect your business metrics in advertising.

This method is based on Yandex Metrica’s search for the appropriate user session with the help of transferred identifiers and recording the conversion to this session.

To find the session and a conversion in it, you must send the following:

• User identifiers in Yandex Metrica: ClientId, UserId, Yclid or PurchaseId. They can be obtained during their site session.
• ID of the Goal. Define the goal that should be achieved in the user’s session. Only goals of the JavaScript event type are suitable for sending. If you already have suitable goals of this type, use them. Otherwise, create a new goal by selecting the "matches" condition and specifying an arbitrary identifier.
• Date and time of conversion. Use the Unix Time Stamp format to match the goal to a specific user session. Yandex Metrica will search for the session match closest to the date you provided to link the conversion to it.

Additionally, you can specify the value (revenue) of conversion and the currency used. Data can be sent via a CSV file in Yandex Metrica interface or using the API.

More about uploading offline conversions via Yandex Metrica interface

More about data transmission using the API

Information about customers and orders from your CRM

This format allows you to access the following data in Yandex Metrica: information about your clients from CRM, their interactions with the site, orders, the status of these orders, as well as data on conversions and purchased items sent along with the order.

Sending data about clients and orders allows you to create segments based on high-value clients, specific products in orders, transaction statuses in CRM, and much more. Additionally, the format provides for sending data on emails and phones, allowing for the creation of ROPO reports.

To use this functionality, you must send the following:

Customer information

• Client ID in your CRM.
• Names.
• Additional parameters of your choice.
• Identifiers by which Yandex Metrica can find their sessions on the tag (ClientId, phones, emails, phones_md5, emails_md5).

Orders (transactions)

• Order ID in your CRM.
• ID of the customer who placed the order.
• Order time.
• Order status, revenue, and cost.

Depending on the transmitted status, conversions will be achieved in the session found for order matching. Additionally, you can send data on the products in the order.

To enable data sending, set up the collection of client identifiers and save them in your CRM. Then upload data about clients and orders through the Yandex Metrica API or using CRM integration.

You can analyze the data using the Order sources from CRM and Sources, costs, and ROI reports.

Learn more about setting up the data transfer from a CRM

Information about calls

If after visiting your site clients often clarify information, make appointments, or confirm orders by phone, you can track these calls and link them to users’ actions on the site.

For example, you can analyze the number of calls, their quality, and final results, such as making a purchase after visiting the site.

Additionally, sending call information allows you to use goals based on the characteristics of transmitted call data — for example, you can set a goal for first-time calls longer than 5 minutes, marked with the "Good Call" tag in the call tracking service.

Third-party call tracking services are often used to track calls. This usually requires you to place a special call tracking code on the site in addition to the Yandex Metrica tag. This code changes phone numbers on the site to substitute ones, allowing the ClientId in Yandex Metrica to be linked with the fact of a call from a user.

Thus, you can set the attribute of completing certain conversions for user sessions on the site based on call characteristics or the total number of calls. Data analysis can be conducted in the "Calls" report group or by selecting call goals in standard Yandex Metrica reports.

If your call tracking service supports sending calls to a CRM system, you can track the full sales funnel for calls in Yandex Metrica, using the transmission of information about clients and orders from your CRM in addition to call information.

More about transmitting calls to Yandex Metrica

How Yandex Metrica links offline data to sessions

Implementing sending data on offline conversions assumes that you save one or more Yandex Metrica identifiers for key events on your site (e.g., filling out a lead form, placing an order, or calling a substitute number). These identifiers are subsequently used for sending data.

To link offline data with your website users and their sessions, Yandex Metrica uses the following identifiers:

ClientID

Unique website session ID created automatically by Yandex Metrica. _ym_uid value in Cookie.

Used for sending data on offline conversions, calls, user parameters, as well as customer and order data from your CRM. To obtain the identifier, use the getClientID method.

Using ClientId is the most precise way of matching data to sessions. This is the recommended parameter for offline data.

ClientId is available in all offline data transmission formats — offline conversions, CRM data, and calls.

UserID

User ID set by the site owner (for example, when the site user logs into their personal account).

Use UserID if you have already set up a user identifier system on your site and actively work with this 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.

Custom IDs will be linked to ClientID only for those site users during whose sessions the setUserID method was called.

UserID is available for sending the data on offline conversions and calls.

yclid

The ID of a click on a Yandex Direct ad assigned by Yandex Direct. Use this identifier if you are interested in sending offline data for Yandex advertising only.

Available only for sending the data on offline conversions and calls. For more information, see Conversion tracking with yclid.

PurchaseId

E-commerce purchase identifier set by the website owner when an item is purchased.

Use PurchaseId when you have to supplement purchase goals with additional information. For example, you can send it for paid orders if the purchase on your site does not lead to full payment at the time of checkout.

PurchaseId is available for sending data on offline conversions.

Emails (including MD5 hashing algorithm)

The customer's email address. It's used only for linking customer data and order data from the CRM. This identifier is useful if you have difficulties setting up the sending of ClientId along with requests or purchases, or if you are sending purchase data from offline sales outlets and want to see the ROPO effect of your traffic.

Yandex Metrica doesn't store the imported email addresses in their raw format; they are hashed by Yandex Metrica upon import.

If you hash email addresses that were in a wrong format yourself, Yandex Metrica will not be able to determine which session the conversion is related to.

You can use the email address mail@yandex.ru to test your hashing algorithm. The expected hash for this address is 3c56ff8fef0f6c65b36b2d25720fe276.

Email addresses are only available in data transmission from the CRM.

Phones (including MD5 hashing algorithm)

Client’s phone numbers. It's used only for linking customer data and order data from the CRM. Similar to email addresses, this identifier is useful if you have difficulties setting up the sending of ClientId along with requests or purchases, or if you are sending purchase data from offline sales outlets and want to see the ROPO effect of your traffic.

Yandex Metrica doesn't store the imported phone numbers in their raw format; they are hashed by Yandex Metrica upon import.

If you hash phone numbers that were in a wrong format yourself, Yandex Metrica will not be able to determine which session the conversion is related to.

To check the algorithm you use for hashing, you can use the 79995551111 phone number. The expected hash for this number is f09f2c3d48f31e2a802944ade2e5aec5.

Phones are only available in data transmission from the CRM.

Period of adding offline data to sessions

Period of adding offline data to sessions is the interval during which sessions can be supplemented with offline data sent to Yandex Metrica.

For all offline data (offline conversions, calls, CRM orders), the period of adding offline data to sessions is 21 days. Data will be added to the session if no more than 21 days have passed between the user’s last session on the site and the moment the conversion data file is processed.

Orders from the CRM additionally have an extended period for modifying the orders that have already been added to sessions: you can modify information about such an order or add it to a session within 111 days from the date of the session to which this order has been added. This can be useful when you need to change the conversion revenue after the order is paid for and change the conversion status from In progress to Paid or any other.

If you use different IDs, conversion attribution methods will differ:

• ClientID, UserID, email, and phone (including hash). 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 site session from March 5.

• yclid. Conversions will be added to a session initiated through the ad linked to the transmitted yclid.

• PurchaseId. Conversions will be added to the session in which the e-commerce purchase with the transferred identifier has been made.

Questions and answers

Is it possible to track a conversion if the user viewed my page but made an offline order?

To track these conversions, transfer customer and order data, including email addresses or phone numbers, from your CRM to Yandex Metrica. 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.

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Unique website session ID created automatically by Yandex Metrica.