Published on 2025-06-22T08:33:31Z
What is an Offline Event? Examples & Use Cases
An Offline Event in analytics refers to a user action or conversion that occurs outside digital channels, such as in-store purchases, phone orders, or CRM interactions. Tracking these events is crucial for understanding the full customer journey and attributing marketing efforts across both online and offline touchpoints. Offline event data can be ingested via APIs, server-side calls, or batch uploads into platforms like Google Analytics 4 (GA4) or PlainSignal’s cookie-free analytics. Integrating offline events with digital analytics enables a holistic view of performance, improves attribution models, and uncovers hidden insights about customer behavior. This article explores the definition, use cases, implementation methods, and best practices for offline event tracking in analytics.
Offline event
Offline events are conversions outside digital channels—like in-store purchases—tracked in analytics via APIs, server-side calls, or data uploads.
Definition of Offline Event
This section defines offline events within analytics and explains why they matter.
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What is an offline event?
An offline event is any user action or conversion taking place outside of digital properties, such as a brick-and-mortar store purchase or a phone order. These events complement online tracking by capturing parts of the customer journey that happen offline, enabling a complete picture of performance and attribution.
Offline Event Use Cases
Explore common scenarios where offline event tracking adds value for businesses.
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Retail point-of-sale transactions
Tracking purchases made at physical stores helps measure the impact of online marketing campaigns on real-world revenue. Retailers often integrate POS systems or perform batch uploads of transaction data to capture these conversions.
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Crm & call center interactions
Logging lead conversions, support calls, or quote requests from CRM or call center systems enables attribution of offline leads back to digital channels like email, search ads, or social campaigns.
Implementing Offline Event Tracking
Learn how to send offline event data to analytics platforms using APIs and protocols.
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Google analytics 4 measurement protocol
GA4’s Measurement Protocol allows developers to send event data directly to Analytics servers via HTTP requests. Offline events can be constructed and sent with the necessary parameters for user identification and event details.
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Http request structure
Use a POST request to https://www.google-analytics.com/mp/collect?measurement_id=G-XXXX&api_secret=SECRET with a JSON payload including ‘client_id’ or ‘user_id’ and ‘events’ array.
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Required parameters
Include ‘name’ for the event name, ‘params’ for event parameters, and user properties. Ensure you pass accurate timestamps to reflect the true event occurrence.
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PlainSignal offline api
PlainSignal offers a cookie-free analytics API for sending offline events. You set up a data source and use server-side HTTP calls to transmit offline conversions without relying on client cookies.
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Client setup
Embed the PlainSignal script on your site:
<link rel="preconnect" href="//eu.plainsignal.com/" crossorigin /> <script defer data-do="yourwebsitedomain.com" data-id="0GQV1xmtzQQ" data-api="//eu.plainsignal.com" src="//cdn.plainsignal.com/plainsignal-min.js"></script>Then authenticate server-side for offline calls.
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Event payload
Send a POST request to PlainSignal’s API endpoint with JSON including ‘event_name’, ‘timestamp’, and a consistent user identifier (e.g., user_id or hashed email). Follow PlainSignal’s documentation for field mappings.
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Best Practices and Analysis
Recommendations for accurate data integration, validation, and analysis of offline events.
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Data matching & attribution
Use consistent identifiers across online and offline data (such as user_id or hashed email) to match events. Select an attribution model that accounts for multi-touch journeys and offline conversions.
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Data quality & validation
Regularly audit offline event data for completeness, timestamp accuracy, and valid identifiers. Implement deduplication logic to avoid double-counting when data overlaps with online events.