Offline Conversion Tracking with Copper CRM
Copper lives inside Gmail, which changes where your tracking data has to land. Here is the setup that works.
This post covers offline conversion tracking with Copper, the CRM that lives inside Gmail. That changes where your data lands and it does not change the fundamentals.
If your team works out of the inbox, your leads often arrive as emails rather than form submissions, which is the wrinkle worth planning for.
When this fits
You use Copper and run ads that drive enquiries.
Some of those enquiries turn into opportunities worth real money.
You want to know which campaigns produced them.
What you will build
Custom fields on People and Opportunities.
Form wiring that populates them.
A workflow or API job on stage change.
A feed to Google Ads.
Let’s implement it
Step 1: custom fields
In Settings, create custom fields for Google Click ID, gbraid, wbraid, fbclid and your first and last touch UTMs. Create them on both People and Opportunities.
Copper has custom field limits by plan. Check yours before designing a twelve field schema.
Step 2: get form data in
Copper does not have strong native web forms, so most setups send website submissions through Zapier or Make, which creates the Person and Opportunity with the tracking fields filled.
This is actually convenient, because that middle step is also where you can normalise and hash values before they go anywhere.
Step 3: the Gmail problem
Here is the Copper specific part.
If a lead emails you directly instead of filling in a form, Copper creates a Person from the email and there is no click ID anywhere. Those leads are unattributable by this method.
Two mitigations that work:
Push more enquiries through a form, even a very short one, so the click ID gets captured.
For email only leads, fall back to matching on hashed email through Enhanced Conversions for leads, which does not need a click ID at all.
Step 4: fire on stage change
Use a workflow or a scheduled API poll to detect opportunities reaching your tracked stages, then post the click ID, value and timestamp onward.
Step 5: upload
Write to a sheet and let Google Ads import on a schedule: offline conversions with Google Sheets.
Before you finish
Real ad click, real form submission, click ID on the Person.
Confirm it reached the Opportunity.
Count what share of your leads arrive by email rather than by form. If it is most of them, Enhanced Conversions matters more than this pipeline.
Check the match rate after one upload.
FAQ
Most of our leads just email us. Is this worth doing?
Partly. Do the click ID work for form leads, and lean on hashed email matching for the rest. Also consider whether a short form on your contact page would capture more than it costs you.
Does Copper have native ad integrations?
Nothing that replaces uploading valued outcomes. Use the automation route.
People or Opportunities for the click ID?
Both. Capture on the Person, copy to the Opportunity, upload from the Opportunity.
Simplest possible setup?
No CRM at all, and you want the simplest possible version? I wrote a full walkthrough of that for Stape using nothing but a spreadsheet: Google Ads offline conversion tracking without a CRM. Click to read it here.
Need this built properly?
Inbox based CRMs need a form somewhere, or there is nothing to attribute. I set up and repair tracking for ecommerce stores and lead generation businesses, so the numbers in your ad accounts match the money in your bank account.
Have a look at what I do, or book a call and we can go through your setup together.
