Set up enhanced conversions for leads with Google Tag Manager

Enhanced conversions for leads allows you to upload offline conversion data without using the Google Click ID (GCLID). Unlike the current version of offline conversion tracking, this version of offline conversion tracking doesn’t require you to modify your lead forms or customer relations management (CRM) systems to receive a Google Click ID (GCLID). Instead, it uses information that was already captured about your leads to measure conversions.

This article explains how to set up enhanced conversion for leads with Google Tag Manager. If your installation doesn't use Google Tag Manager, review the Google tag instructions.

Before you begin

• Make sure that you have Google Ads conversion tracking set up using Google Tag Manager.
• Note the URL where the lead form on your website is located. You may need this information during setup.
• Make sure that auto-tagging is enabled. Auto-tagging is necessary to import offline conversions.
• Make sure that there's first-party customer data available (email and/or phone number) on your website lead form.
• Ensure that you've reviewed and confirmed that you can comply with the customer data policies in Google Ads (view the steps on this below).

Instructions

Create an offline conversion action

1. In your Google Ads account, click the tools icon in the upper right corner of your account.
2. Under “Measurement,” click Conversions.
3. Click the plus button icon to create a new conversion action.
4. Select Import in the new “Conversion action” page.
5. Select Other data sources or CRMs and then Track conversions from clicks.
6. Click Continue.

Note: Import from Calls is currently unavailable.

8. Enter the settings for this conversion action. Learn more about creating conversion actions.
9. Click Create and Continue. The next page will confirm your new conversion action.
10. Check the box for Turn on enhanced conversions for leads. If you don’t want enhanced conversion for leads, you can click Continue with Google click identifiers or Finish setup later.
11. If you select Turn on enhanced conversions for leads, you’ll need to accept the customer data terms (instructions below) before the next step.
    1. Select View Terms next to “Customer data terms” and read the “Policies and Additional Terms for Customer Data”.
       Note: If you aren’t able to view terms, it's because your account conversions are tracked by a manager account. The customer data terms must be accepted from the manager's account and any Google Ads manager account uploading on behalf of the manager account using cross-account tracking.
    2. Click the checkbox beside "I have read and accept the terms on behalf of my company".
    3. Click Agree. You’ll notice your status updated as “Accepted”.
12. For enhanced conversions with leads, you’ll need to adjust the following in the “Settings” window:
    • Automatically detect events: Be sure “Form interactions” is toggled on.
    • Include user-provided data from your website: Be sure to check the box for “Include user-provided data from your website”, then select how you want to include the user-provided data.

Configure your Google Ads User-provided Data Event using Google Tag Manager

Google Tag Manager allows you to quickly and easily deploy and update tags on your website without changing the code on your page. To ensure that your Google Ads conversion tracking tags receive the necessary ad click information, follow these steps:

Note: If you don’t have Google Tag Manager installed, read and follow Set up and install Google Tag Manager.

You'll create a new tag and 2 new variables:

1. Open a new window and sign in to your Google Tag Manager account. You'll need access to both Google Ads and Google Tag Manager.
2. In your Google Tag Manager container, click New Tag.
3. Create a brand new tag (for example, name “My Lead form submit tag”).
4. In the “Choose tag type” list, select Google Ads User-provided Data Event.
5. Enter your Google Tag ID (without “AW-”) in the “Conversion ID” field. If you don’t know your Google Tag ID:
   1. Return to your Google Ads window to find your Google Tag ID.
   2. Go to Tools, then Setup, and click Google tag.
   3. Copy your Google Tag ID (AW-12345), excluding “AW-” in the Google Ads UI.
   4. Return to your Google Tag Manager window to paste the tag ID “12345” in the “Conversion ID” field.
6. In the User-provided Data field, create two new variables:
   Note: If you already have unhashed variables in your data layer (whether using CSS selectors or other variable types), you can select those instead of creating new variables. If you aren’t sure, continue through these instructions.

   User data variable:

   1. Click the dropdown menu and select New Variable.
   2. Name the new variable (for example, “My demo user data variable”).
   3. Click Variable type to select User-provided Data from the list. This variable holds the data values that might be taken from your site during triggered events.

   Email data field:

   1. Click the dropdown menu and select New Variable.
   2. Name the new variable (for example, “My demo email lead form email field”).
   3. Click Variable type and select, for example, “DOM Element”.
   4. Enter Selection method and Element ID and select one of the following options. For more details, read Identify CSS Selectors to use in Google Tag Manager.
      • Use “ID” as the Selection method if the ID attribute exists in the lead form:
        • Use your web browser's web inspector (such as Chrome DevTools) to inspect the DOM and paste the Element ID from the input element's ID attribute (for example, if the form element is <input type="text" id="foo">, use “foo”)
      • Use “CSS Selector” as the Selection method if the ID attribute does not exist in the webform:
        • Enter Element Selector (for example “#promo .purchase”)
        • Enter Attribute Name (for example, “value”).
          Note: If the attribute name is set, the variable’s value will be that of the DOM element attribute. Otherwise, the variable’s value will be the text of the DOM element.

You can repeat these steps for the phone, if they're needed.

Identify CSS Selectors to use in Google Tag Manager

To identify the CSS Selectors to input into the enhanced conversion tag fields (for example, email, phone, etc.), follow these steps. If you already have unhashed variables in your data layer, you can select those instead of creating new CSS variables. If you aren’t sure, continue through the instructions:

1. Navigate back to your lead form page tab (don’t close your Google Tag Manager page).
2. On your lead form page, when you have found the corresponding user-provided data you want to send, use your mouse to right-click on top of it and select Inspect.
   • For example, if you are trying to capture an email address, make sure you are right clicking the email address (for example, [e-mail]) displayed on your lead form page.
3. You will see the Chrome Developer Tools launch within your Chrome browser.
4. Within the source code presented in the Chrome Developer Tools page, you will see a portion of the code highlighted. This highlighted code is the page element where you need to extract CSS Selectors for the customer data you right-clicked in Step 2 of this section.
5. Hover your mouse over the highlighted code and right-click it.
6. Scroll down to Copy, then choose Copy Selector.
7. In your other tab, with Google Tag Manager open, paste that text in the “Element selector” field.
   • For reference, it should look something similar to but not exactly like this:

     #promo .purchase

8. Click Save.
9. Repeat steps 2-8 of this section for each different piece of lead form data (for example, email, name and address, etc.), by copying the CSS Selector into a new variable for each customer data variable in Google Tag Manager.
10. In Google Tag Manager, click Save.

Configure triggers

1. Click Tag Configuration and select the Conversion Linker tag type. The Conversion Linker tag automatically detects the information about the ad click that brought someone to your site in the landing page URLs and stores this information in new cookies on your domain.
2. Create a new trigger:
   1. Click Triggers, then New.
   2. Give your trigger a name.
   3. Click Trigger Configuration and choose Form Submission.
   4. Select All Forms to make sure the new trigger fires every time a form is used.
   5. Click Save.
3. Click Submit in the top right corner.
4. Give your version a name and description.
5. Click Publish.

After saving your user-provided event tag, you can preview the Google Tag Manager for your website by clicking "Preview" in the top right corner.

You can also view and test the workflow within Tag Assistant and submit a test email. Click on the event tag and choose your display variable as “Values”. Review the user-provided data to verify that the email was correctly captured.

Import your conversions into Google Ads

Next, you’ll need to import conversions from ad clicks into Google Ads.

Related links

• About offline conversion imports
• Set up offline conversion imports using Google Click ID (GCLID)