This blog post starts with a confession.
I stole a direct mail piece the other day.
As you might expect from some of my previous posts on the blog, the reason for my thievery was simple: It had a QR Code on it!
Express, Loyalty, and the Mobile Audience
The direct mail piece shown below was sent to my wife.
A mailer from a clothing store such as Express certainly may inspire someone to choose from a variety of possible actions.
- They may choose to take a trip to the mall.
- They may choose to find the latest print catalog in their house from that company.
- They choose go online to browse and shop.
In addition to those options, people may also choose to decide to take similar actions with their mobile device (smartphone or tablet, primarily).
Express does a nice job of reaching out to the growing mobile audience by including a QR Code on the direct mail piece.
The text around the QR Code encourages the recipient to scan the QR Code to join or complete enrollment in their EXPRESS NEXT program.
Inspiration from this Piece
I think they followed a number of best practices within their execution.
- They provided incentive for people to scan
- They included White Space/Padding around the QR Code
- They provided an alternative responsive mechanism — people could choose to send a Text/SMS message instead.
- I’m assuming on this one… but I believe they used variable data. They recognized that my wife was not yet a member of the EXPRESS NEXT program, and thus the call-to-action encouraged her to “Join”.
- They directed people that scanned the QR Code to a mobile website (seen below)
I think overall, this is a very nice example of using QR Codes to integrate direct mail and mobile!
