May
How to Track Offline Sales
Filed Under (analytics) by arthurfreydin on 22-05-2008
Tagged Under : analytics, offline, web analytics
Offline sales are a crucial element to many online business including transaction (ecommerce) based and lead generation. While web analytics solutions like Omniture, Coremetrics, and Google Analytics can provide in-depth analysis of online sales cycles, they cannot track sales that occur offline out of the box. Online retailers and other business models have struggled with the offline metrics for a long time, typically just estimated offline contribution to their online marketing efforts.
I’ve recently invited a account executive from Omniture to present their offering to myself and my team. While I am pretty familiar with their web analytics platform, there was one added feature that really peaked my interest. Omniture has came up with such a simple solution to track offline sales: reference numbers! It’s quite simple how it works. A reference number is attached to each page view that tracks these key metrics (and many others):
- source of traffic (google, yahoo, referring site, etc)
- keyword (organic or paid)
- ad creative
- etc
Once a potential client/customer calls in on the 1-800 number, they provide the reference number to the sales person. The sales person then inputs the number into whatever CRM solution they are using. That reference number is now retained through the entire sales process all the way to the very end.
Simple huh? So simple that the feature can be easily developed in-house with the help of a smart developer! All you need to do is assign unique identification numbers. Tracking unique keywords is easy: just append a key to your destination URLs within your campaign. The URL should look something like this:
http://www.yoursite.com/?kwid=12345678
The first 4 numbers (1234) within the ID can differentiate the search engines while the rest of the keys differentiate keyword and match type. Once a user lands on your site, the entire key (12345678) is visibly populated right under the phone number. If they use the 1-800 to call in for more information or to complete a sale, the sales representative asks them for the reference ID and inputs it into the CRM solution. Presto!
