Utilities: Other: Offline Events

Offline events are a feature of ListManager Enterprise, and are unavailable for standard or Pro ListManager. Contact your account representative at sales@lyris.com if you'd like to upgrade to ListManager Enterprise.

Offline events are intended for tracking purposes, to either track an interest event, a purchase event, or any other event, such as a phone call or clickthroughs. These are events that occur outside of ListManager. This feature allows you to then incorporate these events into your database so that they can be viewed in reports and added to any statistical data that you may be tracking.

Offline events are added to the other events in ListManager, so they can be tracked together. They create a row in the clicktracking table, and can be viewed by going to the Utilities: Administration: Server: Database: View and edit data: View query results page.

Note that each offline event can be associated with only one mailing. An identical offline event can be used for more than one mailing, but must be created individually for each mailing.

In order to use offline events, the following steps must be followed; note that steps 1-4 need to be performed elsewhere in the ListManager interface, to set up the mailing to be tracked correctly:

1. Create a Purchase/Interest/Clickstream Tag using Utilities: Other: Action Tags.

2. Create the desired content. Use the Insert URL functionality in the HTML message. See Content: Insert URL: URL for more information. Otherwise, the content for the mailing can be created directly in the mailing without importing content, by using the %%track%% tag to surround the href. You must have some knowledge of HTML to use this- otherwise using the Content section will insert the correct HTML for you.

3. Create the mailing and import the content created in step 2. If you choose to skip the content step and create the mailing first, make sure the %%track%% tag with the format:

<a href="%%track http://example.com%%">Clickable text</a>

is included in the HTML message portion of the mailing, otherwise there will be nothing available to track. For more information on this, see Mailings: New Mailing: Tracking.

4. Once the mailing has been sent, and recipients have clicked on the tracked link created in content, you can begin tracking. This can be seen by going to the corresponding report, whether it be a clickstream, interest, or purchase event. See Reports for more detail on this.

5. Create the offline event using offline events, offline interest events, or offline purchase events. Note that the email address used must be the same as that of the list member. The following fields must be filled in for offline events:

Event Name

Enter a descriptive name for your event, such as "phone call/date" or "purchased 10 units". The event name must not be a URL ID, which is reserved for clickthroughs. This will be displayed as "StreamWebPageName" when you view query results for clicktracking.

Member Email Address

Enter a valid email address. This address must match that of the list member for that list; otherwise ListManager will advise you that no member with that address exists.

Mailing

Select a mailing from the drop-down menu. It is helpful to name mailings with a date and a description in order to easily find it here. The offline event will be associated with the mailing.

Interest Stage

This is only available for offline interest and purchase events. For interest events, an interest stage must be entered, for purchase events it is optional.

Interest Points

This is only available for offline interest and purchase events. For interest events, an interest point must be entered, for purchase events it is optional.

Quantity

Purchase events must have a quantity of 1 or greater filled in. Interest events will always show a quantity of zero. Interest stage and points are optional for purchase events.

Optional Fields

Custom values (optional fields) are only available for Purchase Tracking. Any optional fields seen here must be created prior. For information on this, see Utilities: Other: Action Tags: Purchase Tag. These custom fields, which are added to the clickstream_ table will appear on both the Purchase Tag (as normal), but also as a value in the offline event.

6. Verify that the data was successfully entered in by going to Utilities: Administration: Server: Database: View and Edit Data: View Query Results. Look at the following tables: clickstreamdata_ and clicktracking_. The event name will appear as the "StreamWebPageName", which cannot have a URL ID (this is reserved for clickthroughs). The page displays the IP address as a negative number; this can be ignored, it is just the way that this page displays it. Note that the TCP/IP address recorded for the offline event will be the TCP/IP address of the person entering the event.

For interest and purchase offline events only:

When looking at the query results, interest and purchase offline events create two tables: clickstreamdata_ and clicktracking_. Interest events always show a quantity of zero and cannot have a product Sku, customerid, or unitprice field. But they must have an interest stage and interest points assigned. They must also have a clickid which references a newly created clicktracking row. Purchase events can have all fields filled in, and must have a Quantity greater than or equal to 1.

These events can also be viewed from Reports. For instance, Reports: Mailings: Tracking Statistics displays the CS# (clickstream # of events). Clicking on the CS# displays a detail of that particular clickstream tracking for that mailing. The offline events will appear here on the list of clickstream tracking events. For even more detail, click on the email address here to view a member history, which will now include the offline events created.