The Case of the Unfriendly QR Code

Surfing around Facebook this evening, I was invited to “Like” a page that, as Facebook often does, has nothing to do with my interests I’ve expressed in my profile or other Pages I’ve liked. The page was for the Washington Redskins — I am not a football fan (baseball is my game). Nevertheless, the Page thumbnail caught my eye, so I clicked it to give it some consideration before I dismissed the invitation entirely.

What caught my attention was the QR code incorporated into the main image of the page. The text in the image implies that the visitor can scan the QR code to get more information about club seats. However. its not very clear what is offered if/when the visitor scans it. There’s a website listed in the image, apparently to get the scanner app on one’s phone. But again, not very clear, especially to someone who is experiencing a QR code for the first time.

There are a few flaws in the use of this QR code application. To not overly pick on the Redskins, I’ll try to be gentle(!):

1. On or near the QR code, there is no indication of what is gained by scanning the QR code. To be user-friendly, you need to clearly specify that there will be a unique or exclusive value gained by scanning the code. The sheer novelty of scanning a QR code just to see how it works will only take you so far. And if you disappoint the person scanning it, by offering little more than the novelty of scanning it, you’ve risked losing some respect and loyalty.

2. The QR code itself has to be one that is scannable by the most common and popular scanner apps. I scanned this particular code with my Droid, neither the app that came with the Droid, nor the Neoreader app I downloaded to my phone a few months ago, could read this QR code. If your code can’t be read on the first try, very few people will be persistent enough to keep trying. The Redskins page has a QR code reader site listed on the image, yet when I go there I discover that it’s ONLY for iPhones and iPod Touches. Ouch! Kind of useless for my Droid!

3. At this point, while I appreciate the effort of the Redskins using a QR code on their Facebook page, it’s really too much work to get the user experience that they are trying to offer. So, for the average visitor to their Facebook page, it’s a point of frustration that we (I) can’t see what is offered. There’s no alternate way to get the experience, or find the destination, of the QR code. That’s their third flaw: Not giving people a way to experience the QR code, even if, going in, they need to download a reader, is not being fan friendly.

The bottom line with QR codes, for those advertisers and marketers using them in the U.S. (we are lagging behind other countries in the effective use of QR codes), is that most have a long way to go in learning how to most effectively use them. There’s many great examples of QR code marketing, but this particular case is exemplary of an unfriendly QR code. Marketers need to test and re-test the QR code experience themselves before they make it live to their audience. That testing, and looking at the experience from the user’s point of view, would help them catch some of the flaws like the ones seen in this example.

5 Can’t-Do-Without Tips to Start One-to-One Marketing

As a 11-year veteran of marketing, I don’t quite go all the way back to the stone ages of marketing when print reigned supreme, but can vividly recall my marketing colleagues and I constantly zeroed in on direct mail response rates, and the resulting activity, as the ultimate measure of success. Granted, we were working in a sort of old school industry (private aviation, of all things) as far as marketing goes, in which no company seemed to want to take a leap into doing marketing differently than their competition. But growing up as a marketer in this environment, and looking back on that time, I wish I could slap some sense into myself and my colleagues.

Unfortunately, too many marketers fall into the same habits that marketers 10 years ago did. Taking the easy route of marrying up a mailing list to a static, one-dimensional direct mail piece. Just take a look at your mail when you get home from work tonight. We call it “junk mail” because it’s not personalized or relevant to us or our interests. We toss it out without giving it 2 seconds of our attention because it’s as plain as day that it was sent by a company who is not as interested in identifying our interests or pain points as they are in dumping their mass marketing list onto a postcard and hoping for a few random responses.

If I come across over-passionate, it’s because so much of the mass marketing we receive should be eliminated, and the sender could experience far greater response, if they try one-to-one marketing. Simply put, one-to-one marketing is all about personalizing your marketing communications, whether it be in digital or print. At the basic level, you can use the recipient’s first name in the copy on your direct mail piece, for example. At a more creative and impactful level, you can design their name or company name into an image used on the piece… like in the image in this blog post.

Here are 5 Can’t-Do-Without Tips for One-to-One Marketing:

1. Stop sending mass email by starting to use your recipients’ first name (or first and last, depending on the nature of your relationship) in all of your outbound marketing.
2. Speak with a marketing company like Prime, who has the technology and experience of using variable data printing and imaging, which enables you to personalize any material (digital and web), like the image to the right. With a mail list and a creative strategy, amazing things can take place!
3. Seek out more information, beyond names and addresses, that distinguish each of your contacts and prospective customers. That data will allow you to make your messages more relevant and create higher response rates. If you are a car dealership, for example, and you know who test drove that shiny new red truck, you should use the image of a red truck in your marketing to them.
4. Use personalized URLs (pURLs) when you want greater response rates to surveys, event registrations, and sales campaigns. Research has proven that if one’s name is in the URL, there is a better chance that they will open the link and respond. But be sure that you are offering something of value for their time; don’t just collect information and abandon them!
5. Turn your campaigns into programs. Your one-to-one marketing should not consist of just one piece on one occasion. Make it a program that offers a different message, but always of value and relevancy, across a long period of time. You want to build relationships that turn into customers and partnerships. One-and-done will only cause your recipients to forget you.

I hope these tips help! I’d love your comments and questions.

P.S. Test Drive personalizing domains and landing pages here! http://trypersonalizedmarketing.com

The Best Marketing Research Tool is YOU!

Ask 100 marketers how you should market any given product or service, and you’ll hear 100 different answers. Theories. You can use case studies, personal experience, and even the brightest marketing minds to help you create the smartest strategies, but you may not be giving one reliable source the credit it deserves.

Specifically, when it comes to B2C marketing, there really is no better way to sanity-check your marketing theories than to ask yourself  how you would respond to receiving the marketing campaign. If you are not “in the space” or among the people who would typically be a consumer of the product or service that you market, then ask someone who is closer to that space. After all, although we are marketers 8 hours (or more!) by day, we are consumers 24 hours a day. And, as marketers, we often forget that we live in both worlds – being a marketer and being a consumer – so to separate the two completely means that you are overlooking a valuable market research tool — YOU!

By no means am I saying that YOU are the only marketing research tool you need. There are plenty of “experts” and sources you could check as well. You only have to spend 5 minutes on Twitter to discover that truth!

Yet, with every piece of marketing you think up, whether it be digital or printed, asking yourself if you would respond positively to the medium and the message is kind of a no-brainer. It’s obvious that we need to ask ourselves how the consumers would respond, since they are the true targets in your campaign. But don’t overlook the power sitting right there in your mirror, and let him/her talk you out of a campaign that just doesn’t feel right. Chances are, something isn’t right about it if YOU don’t think you’d open the piece and take the call to action.