Marketers use various lead trackers. For example, they use Google Analytics, Kissmetrics, Mixpanel, among others. However, offline campaigns in the form of direct mail, telemarketing, billboard ads, live events, brochures, and more are still important for lead generation.
So, how do you track leads from these offline channels?
Here are six methods you can use to track offline leads:
1. Personalized Tracking Links for Offline Campaigns
Remember that offline sales campaign you launched last month? Maybe you were using a billboard or handing out fliers. To send leads from offline channels to your website, you can print custom links for the billboard or flier campaigns.
A custom tracking link has a unique code that will enable you to identify where leads come from and which campaigns generate the best ROI. Custom tracking links can be used to separate traffic generated from different offline campaigns.
You can use unique tracking links in various offline campaign materials, including fliers, billboards, direct mail, brochures, and even business cards.
2. Use Urchin Tracking Modules (UTMs)
Digital marketers use Google’s Urchin Tracking Modules to track the performance of different links. You can embed a special code into your URLs in this Google Analytics module to get a detailed picture of incoming traffic. UTMs are effective for tracking multiple campaigns and collecting online traffic data for analysis.
UTMs are typically used to track online campaigns. However, they can also be set to track offline campaigns. You can shorten the long UTM tracking link using any popular URL shortening services to track your offline ads.
Here are some of the details you can capture using UTM to identify and group offline leads:
- Traffic sources – You can easily separate leads coming from digital platforms from those that access the landing page directly.
- Campaigns – You can identify campaigns that generated the leads.
After setting up your UTM links and printing them on your offline campaigns’ collateral, you can start tracking offline leads using the acquisition and conversion reports in Google Analytics.
3. Using Custom Landing Pages
Let’s say you are in the insurance industry and would like to track the offline leads generated from a recent print magazine campaign. Instead of sending the leads to generic sales pages, you can set up custom landing pages for each campaign.
If you don’t know how to code, you can use tools like Unbounce, Instapage, and Launchrock, which have visual editors, to create multiple landing pages.
Follow these guidelines to track your offline leads with custom landing pages:
- Make multiple landing pages, one for each offline ad for easy tracking.
- For better conversion rates, match the content in the offline ad with what is on the landing page. Try and use the same color schemes, design elements, and similar sales copy.
- Use tools like Bit.ly to shorten offline links. Longer links perform poorly as people don’t like typing long addresses, or they could miss some letters and get a 404 page.
- You can also use dynamic QR codes with embedded links if you are targeting a savvy audience with your offline ads.
- Duplicate or very similar landing page content could hurt your website’s overall rankings on SERPs. Therefore, set the duplicated landing pages to “no index” to prevent search engines from tracking them.
- Some offline leads may not understand the ins and outs of online shopping. Therefore, provide an alternative way for leads to get in touch on the landing page. For example, you can provide a phone number, email address, social media handle, etc.
4. Use Call Tracking for Your Offline Campaigns
Modern call tracking solutions are more accurate at gathering data than traditional telemarketing and inbound telephony. You can use a robust call tracking service like Phonexa to monitor, analyze, and make sense of offline marketing campaigns.
A big percentage of offline leads will try to reach your company by telephone. By using call tracking, you will have granular data about your incoming calls. Learn where leads are calling from, the average call duration, and other information. Phonexa can also generate useful data for campaign targeting and performance analysis.
Phonexa can be integrated with existing business software through APIs, thus making it easier to analyze call data for marketing purposes.
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5. Track Offline Leads Using Custom Domains
Custom domains are easy to set up and enable easier tracking of offline and online campaigns.
For example, you could set up a custom domain for each product or service you are advertising offline.
Let’s say you are advertising various products to insurance buyers, you could use a domain like homeinsurancetoday.com. These custom domains don’t have to lead to specific landing pages. You can redirect visitors to your sales page or custom landing pages if you want.
Use custom domain links on billboards, car wraps, and TV ads to attract leads looking for the specific products or services that you are promoting.
6. Use Custom Subject Lines
If you want to track your campaigns, you need to do more than providing your email address for leads to contact you. Instead, go the extra mile to provide custom subject lines.
For example, offline ads that have an email address should also include some instructions about the subject line that leads should use when reaching out.
This way, you will be able to use email marketing tools to organize incoming emails from these offline leads. Contrary to popular belief, offline marketing is still powerful and quite popular among advertisers, as is evident with the 17% leap in TV Ad revenue reported by the IAB.
That said, you cannot underestimate the power of digital marketing tools when it comes to lead management, conversations, and tracking.
By using digital marketing tools to track your offline campaigns, you will have a wider choice of channels to use for your marketing strategy.
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