Facebook offline conversions

Offline conversions allow you to attribute the performance of your online ads to real-world transactions. Facebook offers retailers the ability to link online ads with offline outcomes such as in store purchases, phone orders, bookings, and more. Lexer can help you clean, format, and continuously send your offline transaction data to Facebook so this attribution can occur, increasing the accuracy of campaign performance reporting in your account.

Let's explore how Offline conversion works, what is required to get this configured, and how it is configured in Lexer. Please see Facebook’s documentation here.

Let’s just pause here to note the difference between the offline (this article) and online versions of the API. The online version helps link digital sales to Facebook advertising (you can read about it here). The two versions are meant to be complementary.

How does it work?

Below is an overview of the process, and where Lexer fits in.

1. A customer views an ad on Facebook.
2. Then the customer purchases the viewed product/service in store.
3. Lexer receives the offline transaction, cleans and reformats the data, and stores this against the customer's profile.
4. Lexer's “offline conversion” integration sends this data to Facebook.
5. Facebook intelligently matches the sales data to a customer's digital persona.

To put it simply, we will upload all sales data to the Facebook offline conversions API, allowing you to better understand the impact your digital ads are having on real-world sales.

As you can see above, Google also supports offline conversions. To see how you can connect Lexer with Google Ads to measure offline conversions there as well, check out the relevant article here.

Integration in a nutshell

Here's a summary of how Facebook integrates with Lexer:

Setting up Facebook Offline Conversions

To setup Facebook Offline within your Lexer Hub, you'll need:

1. Your Facebook Business account login.
2. A Dataset ID (this can be generated in your Facebook page's Business Manager hub).

Start by connecting your Facebook Business account to the Lexer Hub:

1. In the Manage > Integrations tab on the Lexer Hub, select Facebook Business.
2. Click Integrate Facebook Ads.
3. A popup will appear for you to login to Facebook. Enter your business account details.
4. If login is successful your account should appear on the right.

Meta Business Suite permissions

The last step to make sure you have the full functionality of the Facebook integration is to provide full access to the staff members that will manage the integration. If they will need to reintegrate the account or change any settings relating to the integration, its probably a good idea to provide them with these permissions. To be able to do the following steps you will need to have Meta Business Suite admin access.

        1. Login to your Meta Business Suite.

        2. Click on the All tools hamburger icon on the left side of the page.

        3. Click on the Settings tool.

        4. Once you've opened up settings, click on People.

        5. Click on the user you want to provide the relevant settings.

        6. Finally, provide the user Full control and Save.

Provide Meta all relevant permissions

To complete the process, and allow Meta to consume your Lexer insights, you'll need to provide Lexer the necessary access within Meta Events manager.

To do this, open up the Meta Business suite and jump into the Events Manager using the navigation on the Left.

1. Click on Data Sources on the left side of the page.
2. You should see the dataset provided to Lexer. Click on it to open the settings.
3. Open the Settings tab.
4. Scroll down to the Turn on automatic advanced matching section.
5. Toggle all of the options on.

Setting up your Facebook offline conversion event set

Next, you can set up offline conversions by linking it with your dataset by providing the Dataset ID from Facebook.

To find out more about offline events and where to find your Dataset ID, please see Facebook’s help article here.

1. Continuing with your integration set up, click New Offline Event Set.
2. Another sidebar will appear on the right.

3. You may choose to Send Custom Data Fields to Facebook. If you wish to explore this, please contact your Lexer Success team member to set this up. Once that process is complete, check this box. Otherwise, please leave this unchecked.
4. Check the box to Enable Limited Data Use (LDU) for CCPA Compliance (see below for more information). Facebook no longer accepts data that does not comply with CCPA, so this checkbox is mandatory.
5. Check the Run Activation Daily check box (we recommend doing this until you no longer need the event set).
6. Save the configuration. The activation will start to run. Once complete, the data will be pushed to Facebook.

Send a once-off activation

The most common use case for these activations is to run this activation daily. You can however run this activation as a once off activation if this better suits your needs. To do this, simply uncheck the "Run this activation daily?" checkbox when setting the activation up or edit it once set up to stop it running daily (you can find this using the steps above). Make sure to click save on the activation.

California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)

The CCPA came into effect in July 2020, Lexer supports this in line with Facebook's guidelines. To understand how this could impact you, you can read Facebook's docs here.

Please be aware that by not selecting Facebook’s LDU option, you are saying that none of your customers are California residents, and not subject to the Californian Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Failure to correctly identify California residents can result in prosecution under California law.

That's a wrap

You're all set to dive into the world of Facebook offline campaigns using your Lexer Hub. We've covered everything you need to know, from the basics of Facebook offline to its incredible benefits and activation process. If you ever feel stuck or have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out to Lexer Support. Simply click on the chat bot in the bottom right corner of your browser, and we'll be there to help you every step of the way. You've got this!