QR CODES

The Old Way

Some of you may recall the days when emails were just plain old text. Then along came hypertext emails – HTML for short – and they had these amazing things called clickable links. Amazing, action in emails. We thought we, as marketers, had arrived. “Click Here” became almost as popular as discount, sale and buy now in our emails. Some of you also may be familiar with barcodes. They’re everywhere, but perhaps we think about them most often when they won’t scan at one of those self checkout registers. A barcode is just a font that a machine can read. Pretty nifty. Now along comes the Quick Response or QR code. A QR code is what happens when you take one part clickable link and one part barcode and mix them together. You get a barcode with action.

Barcodes only better

A QR code is a 2 dimensional barcode with action. The potential actions associated with QR codes include “send mail to the specified address”, “open a browser and go to this website”, “call this telephone number”, “text to this address”, “text this message to this address”, “share contact info”. Here are some examples of how these actions can be used in a marketing campaign:

• Get this discount coupon
• Send a contact me response by email
• Send product info to me
• Pay for this item
• Indicate my response to a survey
• Subscribe to this service

The possibilities are only limited by your imagination.

What reads QR Codes and Why use them?

The really important thing from a marketing perspective about QR codes is that they can be read by smartphones. That means that by simply pointing a smartphone at a QR code and snapping a picture, your prospect can take the action that you prescribe. Gone is the need to write down a URL, remember a phone number, make a note to oneself. Simply point and click and the action is taken (and of course you, as a savvy marketer are recording the action on the other end so you know who is responding to what, when and how often). QR codes are inexpensive to reproduce because they are black and white and they can be incorporated into just about any marketing material, point of sale display, email, web page, T-shirt etc.

Best Practices for QR Codes

• Make QR codes meaningful – reduce the steps to take the action, consider the context: where will your QR code be seen and by whom, consider the incentive to scan the code: Wiffem? (What’s in it for me?)
• Mobilize the action – make sure if your action goes to a web page that it is designed for mobile browsers, don’t make prospects click again to get the value, make sure your content isn’t a disappointment
• Use short URLs and tracking – more characters makes the code more complex and difficult to scan, use branded short URLs e.g. goo.gl, set up analytics to track usage and ROI for different offers, prospect groups etc.
• Things to check – keep QR codes at least 1” for easy scanning, use high contrast (B/W) code colors, include instructions e.g. scan this code for…, test your codes!