Why Facebook Offline Conversions Is a Must post-iOS 14

If you advertise on Facebook, then you need to be using offline conversions to track your results accurately.

-This is especially true if you have an e-commerce business, as the latest changes to iOS 14 privacy settings will impact how third-party cookies are used.

-Offline conversions give you more freedom to report events back to Facebook, so you can continue to track the success of your campaigns even with these changes in place.

-In this article, we'll explain why offline conversions are important for e-commerce brands and how you can use them to your advantage.

Initially developed for brick-and-mortar stores, Facebook offline conversions have become a crucial solution to capture all cross-channel conversions for anyone running Facebook ads. That includes your business too.

If you're an e-commerce brand owner, you know the importance of advertising across multiple channels to reach your target audience. With the release of iOS 14, however, cross-channel tracking has become more difficult. Facebook offline conversions can help you overcome these issues and continue to reach your target audience. Inchargeads.com makes it easy to set up and use Facebook offline conversions to track your ad campaign results and optimize for sales. With our platform, you can create custom audiences from offline events, dynamically retarget people who've interacted with your business through offline channels and create lookalike audiences to deliver Facebook ads to people who are similar to your offline customers. Scale your best-performing ads to optimize sales and drive better results with your campaigns by identifying where lead captures and conversions occur. With Inchargeads.com, you can continue to reach your target audience and grow your business despite the challenges posed by iOS 14.

What are Facebook offline conversions?

-As advertisers, we are always looking for ways to optimize our advertising and cross-channel tracking.

-One way to do this is by using Facebook Offline Conversions with Incharge

-This allows us to track conversions that take place offline, such as in-store purchases, bookings made over the phone, and in-person consultations.

-This is valuable data that can help us understand our customer journey and optimize our campaigns for better results.

-Incharge.io makes it easy to set up and use Facebook Offline Conversions, so we can focus on what's important - running our business!

Why is it important to track your offline conversions on Facebook?

With Apple's iOS 14.5 privacy update, it's now mandatory for apps to ask users for permission before tracking their activity across other companies' websites and apps for ad delivery and sharing with data brokers. This has caused some big problems for Facebook advertisers, impeding their ability to monitor conversions, show targeted ads to potential customers, and build lookalike and custom audiences.

There is some good news, though. By setting up offline conversions for their businesses, advertisers and business owners can regain access to the 28-day attribution window and view performance breakdowns by gender, age, location, platform, device, etc. Additionally, setting up offline conversions along with tracking tools like Incharge and the Facebook Conversions API allows advertisers to capture all of their cross-channel conversions and attribute them to the correct Facebook ads and ad sets.

If you're looking for a way to fix your iOS14 advertising and cross-channel tracking issues, setting up offline conversions is a great solution. It gives you access to a broader range of data, making it an excellent solution for eCommerce businesses dealing with the privacy restrictions imposed by the iOS 14.5 update.

How to set up offline conversions on Facebook

In order to set up Facebook Offline Conversions, you'll need the following:

- An active Facebook Business Manager account

- An active Facebook ad account

- An offline event data set

With these in place, you can create an offline event set in Meta Events Manager and start uploading interaction data from your e-commerce store and physical locations. Facebook will then match your offline event set with your website's conversion data to identify which ads led to conversions and avoid duplicating events.

Offline conversions can be reported manually to Facebook, or you can automate the process by using the Facebook Offline Conversions API or existing Facebook partner integrations. Another option is to use InCharge Ads Tracking, which sets up all the necessary tools for optimizing your conversion tracking.

By using Facebook Offline Conversions, you can continue to track your advertising efforts and attribute conversions even after the iOS14 update. This will help you keep your cross-channel marketing campaigns on track and avoid any disruptions.

Set up Facebook offline conversions in Events Manager

Create an offline event set in Events Manager

1. Go to Events Manager and navigate to the green plus (+) sign on the left-side menu. Click “Connect Data Sources.”That will create a pop-up. Select “Offline” and click “Connect.”
2. Name your offline event set and add a description (optional). Click “Create.”
3. Select the ad accounts for ad performance tracking using this offline event set.
4. You have the option to switch on auto-tracking so that the new ads you create in this ad account will default to this offline event set. You can also switch on auto-assignment so that new ad accounts will automatically be assigned to this event set. Once you’re done, click “Next.”

Now that you’ve created an offline event set, you can start adding people to it and managing their permission settings. Make sure that all authorized users have the correct permissions so that they can upload interaction data to your offline event set. For more information, check out Facebook’s guide to managing permissions for offline event sets.

By following these steps, you can ensure that you're able to continue tracking the performance of your ads, even after the switch to SKAdNetwork. Facebook offline conversions is a great way to maintain your cross-channel advertising strategy.

Upload offline event data using a CSV data file

Here's what you need to know about using Facebook Offline Conversions to fix your iOS 14 advertising tracking issues:

- You can upload offline event data and begin to measure the offline impact of your Facebook ads.

- Create a CSV data file with your interaction data. This file should contain as much information as possible to ensure accurate reporting, including precise timestamps, customer details, location, event name, and item numbers.

- You have 90 days from an ad impression to upload your offline event data. However, if you create an offline event set without uploading any data within 90 days, Facebook will reduce your timeline for uploading data to 35 days.

- Facebook recommends uploading offline event data within 48 hours after event occurrence for optimal reporting.

By using Facebook Offline Conversions, you can continue to track your advertising cross-channel, even with the recent changes to iOS 14.

How to upload your CSV data file

With offline conversions, you can attribute events to the people who saw or clicked on your Facebook ads. Here's how to get started:

-In Events Manager, select the correct account.

-Under “Data sources,” select the offline event set you want to upload data to.

-Click “Upload Events.”

-In the popup that appears, drag and drop your CSV data file into the box or click “Select CSV File” to upload it from your desktop.

-If you want to double-check you entered your data correctly, select “View Examples” under “Customer Details,” “Event Time,” or “Event Details” to see what data types you should provide.

-Click “Next: Map Data,” and Facebook will review a sample of your data file and identify the type of data in each column. Review each column to verify that Facebook has correctly mapped your data.

-If any data is missing, was incorrectly mapped, or improperly formatted, these will appear as errors or warnings. Resolve as many of these as you can before uploading the file. Note that once you’ve uploaded your offline event data, you cannot delete or update it. You can check out Facebook’s guide to troubleshooting offline event upload issues.

-You can edit a column by hovering over its header and selecting the pencil icon. Then, select the correct data type from the dropdown menu. If you can't find the right data type in the menu, you can select “Custom” to create customized audience segments (and build custom audiences based on them). Note that you can't use this custom data to match offline events to people on Facebook. You can also select “Ignore” if you don’t want to upload a specific column.

When you’re ready, click “Next: Review.” You’ll then see how many rows are ready to be uploaded, your estimated match rate, and any additional warnings. Select a warning to learn more about it and see recommendations on fixing it. If necessary, click “Back” to modify your file or upload a new one. If everything is good to go, click “Start Upload.”

It may take up to 15 minutes or longer to see your results in Events Manager and Facebook ads reporting. Once you’ve uploaded your data to your offline event set, Facebook will match it with the active ad campaigns assigned to the event set. You can now go to Ads Manager to see which events can be attributed to the people who saw or clicked on your Facebook ads.

Set up Facebook offline conversions with the Offline Conversions API

As previously mentioned, the Offline Conversions API is one method of automating the data upload to your offline event set (the other being through a partner integration).

To use this API, you’ll need the following:

• An active Facebook Business Manager account
• A Facebook App ID
• The correct app review and permissions: The rules will depend on how you implement the API. Advertisers who want to use offline conversions directly will not have to undergo an app review and do not need to request any permissions. However, if you’re a third party offering these functionalities to advertisers that use your service, you must undergo an app review and request the ads_management permission during the review.
• Business Manager System User Access and Access Token
• An ad account to run ad campaigns on Facebook
• Offline event set - When creating an ad, set tracking_spec to the offline event set ID to attribute the offline events correctly. Once you do this, you can create event sets, view stats on your imports, and delete and modify your interaction data in Business Manager.

For more information on uploading offline event data via the Offline Conversions API, check out Facebook’s guide.

Set up Facebook offline conversions with partner integrations

Facebook offers many partner integrations for tracking offline conversions. Implementing one of these partner integrations can help minimize repetitive manual tasks and facilitate the automatic uploading of offline event data.

Partners include:

• Point of sale (PoS) systems
• Call center technologies
• Customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing software
• Digital receipts and loyalty companies
• Integration platforms
• Facebook business partners

For the complete list of partner integrations, check out Facebook’s list. You may either access the partner documentation, contact the partner directly for the integration setup, or visit the partner website for more information

Capture all your conversions with Inchargeads Tracking

If you're an advertiser or marketing agency, you know the importance of cross-channel tracking. But with iOS14, that's become more difficult. Facebook offline conversions can help solve that problem.

Our latest service, Inchargeads, can help you set up Facebook offline conversions and other tracking tools correctly, so you don't miss out on any conversions. Here's what we offer:

- First Party Cloud Tracking (Facebook server-side tracking)

- UTM Tracking

- Facebook Offline Conversions

- Conversions API

- Meta pixel

Incharge can fully set up your offline conversion tracking in a breeze as a  platform that integrates with Facebook for conversion tracking.

If you want to make sure you're capturing all your conversions, Inchargeads is the perfect solution. We offer a variety of tracking services, including Facebook Offline Conversions, so you can be confident you're getting the most out of your marketing efforts. Create an account today to get started.