The Offline Conversions API Has Landed

Averie Wong
Authored byAverie Wong

Product Marketing at Walmart Connect

October 4, 2022

Not all conversions happen online. Help your customers extend their campaign measurement to include activities and sales that happen away from a company’s website, with LinkedIn’s Offline Conversions API.

The Challenge Of Measuring Offline Conversions

Offline events, such as over-the-phone or in-person orders and inquiries, as well as in-store purchases, are a critical part of the customer journey. For many marketers, the conversions that occur offline often represent the true business outcomes most important to them. To date, however, marketers haven’t been able to attribute offline conversion events back to LinkedIn.

There’s also an increased responsibility for marketers to prove ROI on ad spend, but they have struggled to measure this on LinkedIn. Upcoming privacy changes in the advertising industry make measurement even more challenging. 

You’re probably using our insights tag or APIs to support online conversions and reporting, but might be feeling the pressure from your customers. Most customers want to understand the offline events that occur as a result of their LinkedIn campaigns to gain more comprehensive measurement and measure their ad effectiveness throughout the full customer journey.

Enter LinkedIn’s Offline Conversions API

The Offline Conversions API gives you the tools to build a solution to the ‘offline measurement challenge’ marketers face. This solution will enable marketers to attribute offline marketing data, such as sales and leads that take place off website, to LinkedIn, and measure the conversion wherever it occurs.

With this API, you can improve your customers’ campaign measurement by employing these 3 strategies:

  1. Stream offline events data directly to LinkedIn Campaign Manager. Measure how LinkedIn ads are impacting the total business. Offline conversion events can be attributed and reported on an account, group, campaign, and ad level.
  2. Use offline conversion data to optimize the next campaign. Having the information to create better outcomes with every campaign is very important to your customers.
  3. Include both online and offline conversion data for a full-funnel view. Enhance your campaign reporting solution by offering activity data for every part of the customer journey.

Using the LinkedIn Offline Conversions API to improve campaign measurement, your customers will be able to:

  • Understand a campaign’s down-funnel impact. The ability to connect offline data to LinkedIn data and measure ad effectiveness across the full customer journey is extremely valuable.
  • Make more informed decisions. Customers will be able to utilize down-funnel performance insights to inform campaign strategy, optimization, and budgeting.
  • Track conversions with cookieless technology. They’ll also be able to measure conversions securely without cookies or Insight Tag.

By utilizing this API, you’ll enable your customers to attribute their offline conversions to LinkedIn ads, help them improve their measurement on LinkedIn, and optimize performance with the outcomes that matter most to them.

Who Is This API For & How Do I Get Access?

Who is it for?

The LinkedIn Offline Conversions API is for B2B marketing technology companies that enable businesses to track and attribute conversions that happen offline or to stream conversion data into marketing platforms, including data connectors, marketing analytics platforms, CRM platforms, and marketing automation platforms.

Am I Eligible?

You are encouraged to apply if you meet the following requirements:

  1. You are a B2B marketing company with an established use case for the API.
  2. You have access to LinkedIn Marketing APIs. If you are new to our APIs, get started by applying for API access.
  3. You agree to comply with the Marketing Developer Platform terms of service.
  4. You can demonstrate Engineering readiness and the ability to complete integration with LinkedIn Offline Conversions API in a reasonable timeframe. 
  5. You are able to dedicate go-to-market resources to launch your solution to customers.
  6. You plan to join the LinkedIn Marketing Partner Program by completing the certification.

How Do I Access?

If you meet the requirements listed above, apply for access to this API by following these 3 steps:

  1. Submit a Zendesk ticket expressing your interest in the Offline Conversions API.
  2. Complete the application survey which will be automatically sent to you in reply. Complete it to the best of your ability.
  3. Then, you’ll receive a response from the LinkedIn team to confirm the status of your application.

By utilizing the Offline Conversions API, you can help your customers understand the impact their ads have on business outcomes, even from offline activity. This is good news for your customers, but also good news for you – you can serve your customers better and grow your business.

Learn more about this API and express your interest by submitting a Zendesk ticket.

As a new API to the Marketing Developer Platform, it will remain private until we are resourced to expand access. We will be accommodating requests for access.