When should you use the offline Conversions API?
First, let’s back up. The Conversions API allows businesses to send first-party conversion events to Meta. This helps improve attribution used for reporting and optimization.
Two Methods
There are two primary ways to leverage the Conversions API.
1. The most common is the web API. This allows you to send a second set of conversion events to fill in the blanks when the pixel fails.
2. The second leverages offline events, usually from your CRM. When someone completes a task or receives a tag, the event is sent to Meta.
When to Send Offline Events
Ideally, use the offline Conversions API when your customer’s website activity doesn’t trigger the conversion. Maybe they made a purchase in your physical store. Or a salesperson contacted them and closed the sale without going to your website.
You could send all events from your CRM, but you will need to deduplicate online conversions. Otherwise, whenever the same event is sent from both your CRM and website, it will be counted twice. While deduplication is possible, this is a technical hurdle that will require some expertise.
The easiest solution is only to send offline or CRM events when there isn’t a website element — like in the examples given earlier..
Do you send offline events via the API?