Things to Look For When Choosing QR Code Generator
If you are looking for software to generate QR codes for use in marketing campaigns, this short guide offers a number of considerations to help you make the best choice.
You may be thinking, why a guide? Isn't generating QR codes pretty straightforward these days with so many websites offering the service?
Well, to borrow the popular phrase, not all QR code software is created equal.
Here are five things to look for in QR code software, with comparative information for pbSmartTM Codes, to help you make the right choice.
1. Tracking the Results of Your Campaign
A lot of QR code software makes it easy to create a QR code, but they fall short in the one area that matters most to marketers: measuring the results of the campaign. Make sure to check the reporting capabilities of the QR code software. At a minimum, it should help you understand how many times customers scanned your QR code and visited your mobile web page.
pbSmart Codes software offers this and much more, to let you see exactly how your campaigns are performing. You can view unique vs. total page views; the number of email leads generated by your campaign; as well as the ability to create, send out and report on mobile surveys you conducted with your campaign. All are viewable in a customizable dashboard that you can filter by date, by campaign and by campaign groups.
2. Creating a Unique Customer Experience
With all QR code software you can decide what to deliver to customers after they scan your QR code. In most cases, this includes a limited set of options like sending customers an email address, phone number, or your Vcard. When choosing QR code software, think about what you want to get out of your campaign and the experience you want your customers to have. Are you missing opportunities to provide more unique and valuable brand experiences than simply sending a Vcard?
With pbSmart Codes software, you have the option of creating mobile web pages for each one of your QR codes, each with a customizable message, look-and-feel and images. In addition to a personalized customer experience, these mobile web pages give you many ways to deliver value to customers, including coupons, event registration, surveys, and multiple calls-to-action.
3. Promotional Materials for Your QR Code Campaign
Some QR code software allows you to order promotional products that feature your newly created QR code. Promotional items like these are a good way to put your campaign in the hands of more customers, generating more scans and greater results. When evaluating the promotional products offered by a QR code provider, here are some factors to consider: the quality and variety of items available; how easy they are to customize to match your brand; whether you can add call-to-action text; and how easy it is to change a design later or order additional quantities.
Pitney Bowes has partnered with Zazzle.com, a leading provider of promotional materials, to make plenty of different products available to order from pbSmart Codes. Each product comes in a number of highly customizable designs that can be saved for later editing and re-ordering. Read more tips on creative promotional ideas.
4. Managing Your QR Code Campaigns
Once you have created a number of QR code campaigns, keeping track of them becomes very important to ensuring their success: which ones are still active, which ones need to be edited or updated, which ones are performing best and what successes can I repeat for a future campaign? If your QR code software doesn't offer a campaign management tool, you will find it hard to answer these important questions.
pbSmart Codes stores every QR code campaign you create in the My Campaigns section, allowing you to go back at any time and review, edit, deactivate, and delete existing campaigns. Another helpful management tool to look for is a campaign categorization system, allowing you to group different campaigns for sorting and reporting. Instead of just looking at the results of a single campaign, or all of them at once, pbSmart Codes allows you to view reports by a campaign grouping, e.g. all of the QR codes generated as part of your summer promotion. Organizational features like this make it much easier for you to manage and evaluate the success of your QR code campaigns.
5. Ensuring Reliability and Good Customer Experience
It goes without saying that when you are making decisions about marketing services, you choose partners who can deliver reliably and who offer the best value. These qualities are essential to making sure that customers have the best experience with your brand.
With QR code marketing, a positive brand experience is probably even more important than with traditional media. If a customer opens a less-than-stellar direct mail piece, you'll likely get another chance to make an impression with a future mailing. With QR codes, a bad experience like a failed link to your mobile web page may mean that a customer never scans one of your QR codes again.
To ensure a reliable, positive customer experience, think about how long a QR code provider has been around. They are cropping up everywhere, but will they still be available in a year's time when you want to order additional quantities of your promotional stickers, or will you have to start over and create new ones from scratch? It is also important to look at how well the QR code software enables you to manage existing campaigns. For example, if it doesn't allow you to update your mobile web pages, your customers may stop scanning the code on your restaurant menu because it never changes. With pbSmart Codes, you can manage and update existing campaigns to ensure that your QR campaigns always deliver a relevant and valuable experience for customers.
Hopefully the information in this guide has given you a better idea what to look for in QR code software. One of the best ways to make sure a particular option works for you is to give it a trial in your next campaign. With pbSmart Codes, our Basic plan is completely free of charge, giving you a chance to evaluate it with no risk. Try it out today, or read more about the features and benefits of pbSmart codes.
What Next?
This guide outlined five things to consider when evaluating QR code software. To learn more about pbSmart Codes, visit our Plans & Pricing page.