Case Studies: Consumers Use QR Codes

QR Codes give shoppers and other consumers access marketing or product information from their mobile phones, but do consumers actually prefer them? Will they scan these codes when other ways to access the information are available? For many, the answer is yes!

Let’s look at three real-life examples:

1. One marketer sent a holiday card to its customers with an invitation to login to a personalized URL to select a charity to receive a donation in their name. Of those responding to the campaign, 11% chose to log in by scanning a QR Code rather than typing in the personalized URL.

2. An online educational institution serving the high school market wanted to boost enrollment. It sent a promotional campaign inviting students and their parents to log in to a personalized URL to learn more about online education and enter a sweepstakes to win an iPad2.  More than one-third (37%) of the logins came via QR Code.

3. In order to refresh its retail location, an herbal supplements and vitamin company wanted to find out what products and services its customers were looking for that might be missing from its existing mix. To find out, it sent a survey via personalized URL to nearly 20,000 contacts. QR Code scans accounted for almost 20% of all PURL visitors.

We could give lots more examples, but you get the idea. People love mobile, but they don’t love typing in long web addresses. If you provide them with a way to skip right to the content they are looking for, they’ll very likely to take it, especially when they are responding to a personalized URL campaign. That’s a huge benefit of QR Codes.

This can also lead to an elevated response rate to the overall campaign. Why? Because the easier it is to respond to a marketing message (including multiple ways to respond), the more responses you’re going to get.