Is there an accurate way to track conversion data for offline advertising campaigns? I.e. the number of downloads of a mobile App that is promoted on coffee sleeves?

I’m not an expert in this field yet!, but it seems to me there could be some type of code or password that would differentiate the source.

For example, it might be something as simple as “coffee” for coffee sleeves, “coaster” for bar coasters, or “flyer” for printed flyers, as well as “online”, obviously for online. The sign-in/login page for the app could say something like, “Enter code for special offer!”

Welcome to Fluther.

For one thing, and this should be relatively easy to accomplish, you could put the downloadable app on an obscure mirror site which, while completely open to enable anyone to find it and download the app, would be only promoted on the coffee sleeves. That way you can be relatively sure that all but a negligible number of downloads are a result of only the printed ad.

You use a referral page. So the link on your sleeve, whether it’s just printing the url, or a QR code, or whatever magic you want to use, links to a webpage specifically to capture the information.

This also gives you some other advantages
– a chance to do a little device detection and refer to the correct app store link, if you like
– you don’t need a whole new campaign because your app link changed with Apple, or anything like that

Remember that you won’t capture everything, people will still type the app name in their app store search and try to find it that way, but at least you’re getting some information.

It ought to be simple. Have a unique URL printed on the coffee sleeves.

Sign up for Google Analytics (free), and register that URL (above) on the GA account.

Examine the results.

Thanks for the response everyone. As funkdaddy had brought up in his response:

Some people will go directly search the App in Playstore/iOS when they see the ad (rather than scanning QR code or using the link). How can we track downloads from searching in the stores which came as a result of seeing the ads on the sleeves? Is this even possible?

Well… that might be possible, at least to a degree, depending on how many resources you want to devote to this. For example, since many people use social networking to “check in” to stores if you capture that information (including the timestamp) and compare that with the time of the login to your download page – including the user ID for both events – then that’s one way.

Alternatively, and putting even more resource load on this, if you capture the location data from the user’s phone at the time of the app download – and if you have a file of store locations already loaded in a database table – then you can use the locator information there to make the connection.

However, this all comes at a cost in programming, maintaining the various databases you’d need to keep up – and keeping them running, obviously – AND when your users find out how closely you’re tracking them then you could lose all of their business.

I don’t think you’re ever going to be able to track 100% of conversions from any particular advertising unless you make an app for each type of ad. That usually isn’t practical.

That’s true of just about any type of advertising, for most products though. Even online advertising isn’t tracked 100% since there is the possibility of search, direct traffic, and the cumulative effect of seeing ads multiple times.