QR (Quick Response) codes are two dimensional barcodes which are designed to allow its contents to be decoded at high speed. QR codes can represent alphanumeric and thus can act as hyperlinks. With the emergence of QR codes, hyperlinks are no longer restricted to your computer – they are ready to go live in the real world! Products or brands can carry QR codes to take users to their website or social network page or offer a discount.

Promotions industry, which is in need of delivering coupons, incentives and gift cards to new consumers, will benefit a lot from QR code. A promotional campaign can now have an entry point in a nontraditional way. Newspaper ads or inserts, billboards, posters, internet ads, cover of consumer products – anything can carry a QR code which can be scanned in a mobile and navigate the user to an offer. This will make mobile the medium for consumer to interact with the campaign.

Printing QR codes is simple and cost effective. QR codes can be printed on any material and consumers can capture it with ease. There are a number of mobile QR code scanner apps available, to decode the hyperlink (or any other information) and navigate the user to the web application in the mobile, where the campaign receives the consumer and offers an incentive/discount.

In Context Promotions QR codes are used to deliver hyperlinks with incentive PINs which unlock a campaign. Users can use their mobile to scan these QR codes and land in a marketing campaign which will be configured with incentives and consumer actions (like surveys, watching videos, etc). The process of engaging the consumer is made quicker and more efficient in this process.

Not just hyperlinks, even emailing, texting and calling can be enabled by QR Codes. These codes can be made into info like, ‘mailto:abc@mycompany.com’ or ‘tel:+121989898224’ or ‘sms:+12198347873’. When such QR codes are scanned the mobile device can take necessary action like opening compose option in email application or calling/smsing the number etc. Customer engagement is made instantaneous and promotions industry will benefit a lot from such ‘Quick Responses’!

How does it work?
Conventional barcodes (also called 1D barcodes) are vertical black stripes that represent numbers and thus can represent an id of a product thereby eliminating the effort of entering it manually. When a laser beam is fired on such a barcode the black lines absorb the light and white stripes reflect and the scanner reads the reflection and thus decodes the number.

Alternatively, the 2D barcodes were designed to embed more information than just numbers. There are a variety of 2D barcodes other than QR code like Color Code, EZcode, Aztec code, etc but QR code has eventually become synonymous with 2D barcode because of the quick responsiveness and variety of information it can store.

QR code achieves not only quick response from the scanner but also the ability to scan from different angles as information is stored in both horizontal and vertical directions. This leverages the scanning action and makes it easier for consumers.

Also, thanks to the error correction methodology we can even embed a readable text inside the QR code which gives an artistic embellishment to it. Hence, with all these advantages QR codes will go mainstream in promotions industry and make it all the more effective in achieving its goals.