How QR Codes can spread cheer to your Christmas Marketing Strategy

This holiday season, you’ll find stores, brands, and companies galore utilising QR codes as part of their marketing and sales strategy. Unlocking the hidden potential of QR Codes can yield surprising results in your online and offline retail operations across the festive season.

We surveyed over 2,000 consumers to see if QR codes on printed product labels could help shoppers keep track of items they liked whilst shopping instore. Over four in ten people said that having a visible QR code would make them more likely to make a purchase.

If retailers decide to implement QR Codes within their Commerce Strategy, then it's important to consider that users should never have to guess what to do with your QR code. Popular uses include discounts and promotions through unique codes, but there's so much more potential behind them, especially when it comes to engaging and converting consumers across omnichannel commerce.

Over 4 in 10 people (42.56%) would actively improve their purchasing if QR codes became commonplace across hybrid-retail models.

From a free to relatively low-cost improvement, they could prove to become an efficient way of improving traffic, productivity and of measuring your marketing campaigns because they provide specific data metrics like time, location, and frequency.

QR codes could assist customers purchase an item online and have it shipped directly to a different address while physically standing in your store. This could help them overcome shopping barriers (such as long queues instore or lack of stock availability).

Still, it could be essential to enhance the holiday shopping experience during this hectic period. The more at ease shoppers feel, the likelier they are to become a loyal, repeat customer.

Younger demographics are far more adjusted regarding the potential impact of utilising digital technology instore. When questioned, over six in ten shoppers (62.74%) between the ages of 16-24 would embrace the universal use of QR codes in retail, along with 56.95% of those aged 25-34.

This confirms the importance of taking a mobile-first approach to your websites and online platforms. Using QR codes is quick and easy to set up. There is a minimal investment required from retailers, and our research shows that if they are used strategically, they could lead to a significant increase in sales.

But the use of a QR code on a product tag will depend on your website working well for those accessing via their mobile phones.

You need to ensure that you have the proper infrastructure in place to quickly log in to their account and save items of interest, make additional online orders, or find out about upcoming events or usage options.

If the mobile version of your website is challenging to use, then a shopper may quickly log-off, and neglect to complete their purchase.

3 reasons why you should be using QR codes during the holidays:

1. Frequent mobile users love QR Codes: With many different QR code scanning apps available for smartphones, and the increase of holiday shopping online via mobile, it’s worth incorporating QR codes in your holiday marketing strategy.

Placing a QR code on your holiday advertisements will drive traffic to whatever media the QR code is featuring (ideally a key-selling point of your seasonal sales).

2. Get Creative: Create a scavenger hunt via QR codes for a fun, interactive activity for consumers at your physical stores, restaurants and shopping centres.

Take the opportunity to direct traffic to social media pages, landing pages, and even apps or business locations.

QR codes that feature on Digital Billboards tend to be far more appealing to consumers than online ads, so if you can, plan and create an actionable billboard to coincide with any public campaigns.

3. The Season of Giving: Quintessentially Christmas; tie in gift-giving and donations with your codes. 'Tis the season, after-all.

How QR codes can drive Christmas Sales

1. Advocate online shopping by directing your customers to your online shop: One way to boost your Christmas sales using QR codes is by advocating your customers to shop online by directing them to your website or online shop.

To do so, embed your online shop’s website into the QR code and lead your customers directly to your site.

2. Embed a QR code catalogue for your advent calendar sales: Commercial use of the advent calendar has become commonplace within consumer retail, so be sure to get creative.By creating a catalogue of your advent calendar 'must-have' products into a QR code, you can increase your sales.

3. Run a QR code powered discount giveaway: An aspect of retail shopping consumers love is nabbing a bargain or receiving exclusive giveaways.Innovate your giveaways and discounts. Take Fast Checkout for example; their latest "Parker Goes Fast" campaign generated more than 50,000 orders in just 12 hours. How? Fast branded NASCAR driver Parker Kilgerman's car with QR codes on its hood, sides and interior. Anyone who subsequently scanned one of those codes was directed to the Fast Hoodie, with a huge discount of 96.66% - that's right, a $1 Hoodie. During this promotion, more than 70,000 people scanned the car's QR codes.

4. Direct your customers to your Social Media profiles: Connecting with your customers through social media is vital to increasing your Christmas sales.Identify and promote you primary holiday sale products. Dictate how you want your audience to receive your brandTo direct them towards your social media handles, you can embed all of your social media handles using a social media QR code. In this way, your customers can scan their way through to get in touch with you.

5. Get your customer’s feedback: When managing an important Christmas sales campaign, it's important to know your customers’ opinions about their experiences whilst shopping with you.For example, to collate feedback, you can generate a QR code for your Google form. This way, retailers are able to receive customer feedback and improve your services to them almost immediately.

We can help link your brick & mortar stores with your online presence

The holiday season is the perfect time to start getting creative with your social media marketing strategy.QR codes promote interaction and engagement through mobile. This marketing strategy allows businesses to deliver key selling point information to consumers.

Consumers are impatient with processes that are laboured. It’s all about creating an instantaneous, streamlined customer experience, especially within marketing.

Get in touch with us today to discuss methods about you you can maximise your QR code potential to monitor the performance of your marketing campaign accurately.

Contact us via phone on 020 4566 9773 or email hello@sherwen.com for a free consultation.*These findings are based on a survey of 2,009 UK shoppers, commissioned by Natrep. The survey ran from 16.08.21 - 23.08.21.*