Events: Online vs Offline
When it comes to how, and really when events are triggered and fired, there are two methods, Online and Offline.
Online events refer to events which are fired within your immediate lead funnel. These events include anything which occurs from your offer, or through Pingtree in some manner. Online events wouldn't require a third party to fire a trigger unlike in an offline event.
These online events would generally include your system events as well as any custom events you place directly on your offer.
Offline events however are a bit more complex and describe an event which is triggered outside of your immediate lead funnel i.e. your offer or Pingtree clickscript.
Offline events require a few additional elements than what online events do.
Offline events require a postback to trigger the event itself.
They require either a manual or dynamic trigger done by a third party and/or their platform.
Example Scenario:
John has a campaign inside of Pingtree which contains an offer he built in the Debt Relief sector. John has a third party call center and CRM where he is distributing his qualified leads that fill out his form and has a team who's calling, servicing and managing these leads.
John has 3 events he's utilizing in his campaign:
Base Form Sold - event_id=3
Credit Pulled Event - event_id=502
Deal Closed Event - event_id=505
Anytime a lead makes it to John's offer and qualifies based on the several set of rules and filters he's integrated, this lead will be "sold" (i.e. distributed) successfully to his call center endpoint and a Base Form Sold event (event_id=3) will be automatically triggered and stored.
Once these leads make it into John's Call Center CRM, he has placed a unique URL called a postback which will be triggered by his CRM platform anytime one of his leads has their credit pulled, indicating the lead has shown higher intent. The postback URL John has installed in his CRM is below.
https://api.pingtree.com/api/event/global/65a709215485p92619e63702?event_id=502&transaction_id=71d77496-452e-4ff9-8f5a-f789285dfde2
The next week John goes into his Pingtree reporting dashboard and see's that another event fired a few days after his Credit Pulled event occurred. This time he sees that this same lead has been attributed with a Deal Closed event, indicating that the lead has fully converted.
In this example scenario, John utilized both online and offline events.
John's Base Form Sold event was fired online due to it occurring at the time the lead was distributed to his CRM from the Pingtree platform.
John also saw two offline events execute for this same lead when both the Credit Pulled event and the Deal Closed event were triggered. Whether or not these were triggered dynamically by John's CRM platform or if they were triggered manually, both required the use of a postback URL and they both originated from a platform outside of Pingtree.
These factors are why the events which were fired later are considered to be offline events whereas the event triggered when his lead was distributed is considered an online event.