What was once a fringe use case, mainly popular in Asia, has wilt the new normal for marketers in North America and wideness the globe. Quick response (QR) code usage exploded during the pandemic and vastitude as a contactless and easy way to momentum engagement from users with menus, and quickly expanded to promotions and app downloads.
In the years since restaurants first deployed QR codes to replace the need for physical menus, the chessboard-like grids now varnish signs, mailers, product packaging, badges, stickers, napkins, and plane individual receipts.
And, thanks to a viral Super Bowl ad, you’re increasingly seeing them on your TV. These are all interesting use cases to bring offline users to your digital properties, leveraging the ubiquity of smartphones in nearly every pocket as a way to underpass the “phy-gital” divide.
QR lawmaking tactics are easy to identify. Examples to emulate are all virtually us, but they say that, “tactics without strategy is the noise surpassing defeat.” Throwing money at QR campaigns is like making use of a shiny new toy, and perhaps that expands the reach of your marketing, but just utilizing QR codes doesn’t necessarily move the needle for your business.
However, QR codes can do quite a lot to transform and slide the strength of your digital connection to consumers when combined with a robust mobile growth strategy. And for many industries, offline audiences can be a huge source for growth, representing a larger addressable market than existing desktop or mobile traffic.
In order to have this maximum benefit, platforms must find the right wastefulness of intent-based marketing and think well-nigh how digital engagement fits into their broader performance indicators, like engagement, retention, or lifetime value (LTV).
Optimizing your QR lawmaking strategy
As in other channels, to win this game, you must match the placement of a QR lawmaking wayfarers with the intent of the users who see it. There is no one-size-fits-all message. Trademark sensation is often aimed at wide audiences for towers the top-of-funnel pipeline. Whereas highly targeted and personalized calls to whoopee should be deployed in a one-on-one pathway, directed specifically at users who have demonstrated upper intent.
It’s important to wield QR lawmaking campaigns in a portfolio approach, aiming variegated messaging at variegated regulars segments. Whether you’re promoting app-only features, driving app downloads, or offering a financial incentive, customers will respond to variegated calls to whoopee (CTAs) depending on the waterworks they’re in—and where they are in the consumer lifecycle.
Using intent-based strategies
An constructive portfolio will have a mix of increasingly general, ongoing one-to-many campaigns as well as personalized one-to-one campaigns. And plenty of examples exist between those ends of the spectrum.
An efficient strategy is to match the volume or specificity of the wayfarers with the intent of the user. A simple framework is to unravel users (and campaigns) into three buckets:
1. Passive campaigns (low intent)
Most big brands invest in unstipulated sensation campaigns already, so subtracting a QR lawmaking to real manor they’re once paying for adds an spare layer of return on that investment. Depending on the industry, a trademark might want to take mobile users directly to app stores to download their app and uncork onboarding for their platform. Or they can take users to a mobile splash page and leverage other tools like smart banners to yank them remoter lanugo the vanquishment funnel.
These campaigns can be put on billboards, in print in periodicals, or plane on TV screens during commercials or as a sponsor during TV segments. These campaigns will have wide visibility, but low expected vivification rates (click-through rate, or CTR). In time, users might be increasingly whiz at grabbing their phone and vitalizing a lawmaking during the undertow of a fleeting TV spot, but with print mediums, users have time to see a lawmaking and decide when to vivify it. Incentivising these CTAs will uplift their vivification rates, and by measuring their success holistically, brands can optimize their marketing efforts virtually new users uninventive via QR codes.
2. Zippy campaigns (medium intent)
For plane greater efficiency, QR codes can be leveraged on owned channels through physical or digital representation. This includes signs virtually a retail location or stickers and posters in areas where customers tend to volume or wait for service. Groups of users will see these codes, but are inherently increasingly primed to use them as they are visiting the site as an zippy customer.
While these user groups are smaller, they are a higher-intent subset of the addressable market, so their engagement rate should be much higher. You’ll see increasingly and increasingly QR codes at brick-and-mortar locations for restaurant chains, suit stores, and other retailers. The objective is to help migrate existing customers in the app, where they’ll be worldly-wise to engage long without they’ve left the store.
3. Zippy campaigns (high intent)
Offering a way to engage or momentum app adoption among repeater audiences is an constructive strategy. Going further, brands might deploy QR codes in a one-to-one way by placing them on things that their customers take with them. Codes can be placed on takeaway bags, handouts, fliers, product packaging, inserts in delivered packages, or on a consumer receipt. In some cases, the QR lawmaking could be generated dynamically, specifically delivered for that particular end user. A deferred deep link might help vivify a new user worth or ensure a new shopper is enrolled in a loyalty program and that the consumer gets credit for their very first purchase.
Onboarding in-person customers to an app wits leapfrogs normal vanquishment steps. Customers now have a uncontrived pathway to engage with a trademark and can do so in the easiest way—from the app on their phones. Brands then have a increasingly loyal and engaged customer, one they can reach with deep links from a variety of consumer relationship management (CRM) channels.
What happens without a user scans your QR code?
From the start, brands must decide where to send the user once a QR lawmaking is activated. To the app store or your mobile web site? Both routes can sooner lead to an app download, so whether it’s a single click to the app store or a two-step process with a splash page, the app install is still the primary goal.
And once again, there’s a visualization to be made. Just downloading the app is a win, but a deferred deep linking wits that personalizes the first app unshut enables a largest user experience. Otherwise, all users get the same first-time wits on a generic home screen, providing no personalization. For example, with a subtle transpiration like the confirmation of a promotion lawmaking or content that is tailored to the user’s prior engagements, the first-time app unshut can uplift user conversion, retention, and ultimately LTV.
It’s understandable why many brands miss this personalization opportunity; it’s hard! But a mobile linking platform (MLP) like Workshop enables deep linking to bring users to their desired content—even without downloading the app—to expedite onboarding flows and plane auto-apply promotion codes. In a world where incentivization is used aggressively to win new users, these small UX boosts can requite a huge wholesomeness to brands that leverage deferred deep linking.
Real-time engagement
And let’s not forget that the “Q” in QR stands for “quick.” These codes not only underpass the offline-to-digital gap, they enable firsthand digital engagement. Expect to see QR codes deployed throughout many variegated industries, expressly the travel and entertainment sectors, as a way to engage in real time. Because apps indulge for uncontrived digital end-user engagement, expect increasingly industries to leverage them comprehensively throughout the consumer lifecycle. It’s a win-win for the platform and consumer as these UX opportunities often indulge end users to do increasingly in less time than in an offline or asynchronous digital world.
In the travel industry, for example, apps indulge for mobile check-ins, upgrades, and supplies service in whop of a trip, but moreover keyless hotel room entry and over-the-top (OTT) entertainment during the trip. Not to mention the usual worth management functions that could vastly reduce the need for expensive consumer service undeniability centers.
The benefits of a mobile linking platform
Greater app adoption from larger, offline addressable markets combined with the user wits benefits of real-time engagement is once a win-win justification for QR lawmaking deployment. But by leveraging a solution like Branch’s MLP for QR codes, marketers can hands connect the dots between offline activations and down-funnel events.
Did a TV or mailer wayfarers promoting 10% off a first in-app purchase momentum unbearable new buyers, or was it the $10 unbelieve that delivered greater ROI? Down-funnel attribution gives marketers quantifiable results from end to end. This data provides maximum visibility into the engagement that originated offline via QR codes.
Branch and QR codes
We’ll all start noticing QR codes with greater frequency on increasingly and increasingly offline channels. But some of this will be a wasted effort by brands until they think strategically well-nigh their deployment and holistically well-nigh their measurement. Thankfully, we’re here to help!
Learn increasingly well-nigh how you can grow your merchantry with Workshop QR codes.