It’s Official: QR Codes Drive Higher Results than Direct Mail

by david

QR Codes are a simple yet very effective way to engage your audience and measure the impact of your marketing assets and ROI. And with its  explosive growth this past year, QR is showing no signs of slowing down. Despite its massive growth, we've come across a new stat that even surprised us! According to research by Nellymoser, QR Codes beat out direct mail in driving response. Readers of national magazines in the US scan QR codes, Microsoft Tags, digital watermarks and other mobile action codes at an average rate of 6.4 percent. In comparison, the average response rate for direct mail is 4.4 percent, according to the Direct Marketing Association, and the average response rate for a catalog is 4.3 percent. Other key findings include:

• Mobile users are actively engaged and view an average of 18.9 mobile pages.
• The total number of scannable codes has the strongest impact on response rates, with more codes raising visibility and interest to consumers.
• Codes promoted with the promise of a discount, coupon or chance to enter a sweepstakes have a higher response rate.
• Finally, magazines that repeat a program in multiple issues get higher response rates over time than those who run a campaign just once.

As awareness and adoption of QR Codes grows exponentially, in Europe and worldwide we expect the level of engagement to increase further. Marketers should act accordingly... For expert advice on QR codes and mobile customer engagement, please visit www.scanlife.com or join the discussions on the “Exchanging Smarter Ideas on Mobile Engagement” LinkedIn group.