From the Trenches is a Blastra series featuring practitioners solving real problems at work - one shot at a time.
Digital attention keeps getting more expensive, and every SaaS company is trying to get it with roughly the same playbook. The physical channels are far less crowded, and they still work. A stand at the right conference, a run of handouts, a direct mail wave, an onboarding kit in the box. Not only do these channels work, they are much better attributable than SaaS marketers think.
My company, QRCodeStack, makes the QR codes that other companies print on flyers, signs, product boxes and conference handouts. Those codes are dynamic, which means that every code is a redirect. And this serves two goals: first, you can change a destination link behind the code, second, you now get a report on each scan - the time, the kind of device, and roughly which location it came from.
With that, a lot of offline initiatives can now be tracked and attributed. Here are some interesting patterns I've been observing among our customers.
Expand the audience
One of our customers ran an annual expo and an awards program. They went in with 50 codes and sensible names: convention housing signage, expo one-pagers, a separate code for each vendor's product demo video, award nomination forms, scholarship applications. A unique code for each thing they printed. Interestingly enough, more than half of the QR code scans came from a desktop computer. What happened was this: attendees were scanning codes at the stand, and then sending pages to colleagues who were opening them at their desk. This grows the audience and is not something that an attendee counter can register. It also means that somebody is sizing you up who never met you at the stand.
Compare physical channel performance
Most companies make one code for a whole campaign, which is like running one phone number for sales, support and HR. You get a total and nothing else.
Another customer of ours ran a retail campaign across 37 numbered in-store displays. Same design, same landing page, one code per display, and everything about them identical except where they stood. Each printed code was tied to a specific location, so they got to compare performance results. The best display got more than a thousand scans. The middle of the pack got about forty. Three got none at all.
With one code for the whole campaign they would learn none of that. With unique codes they saw that a single store did most of the work, and they got an obvious next step: go and find out what was different about that store.
Change the offer after it is printed
One of our customers is an edible-oil brand with a single code on its bottles labeled "Lab Test Report". Each time a new batch certificate is issued, they point that code at the new document. The label was printed months ago and it still shows the current report.
For a SaaS team the equivalent is the pricing page. You print 5,000 handouts with a pricing URL on the back, and then the pricing changes, or the campaign page is retired, or the site moves to a new structure. A static code has that URL locked into the ink. A dynamic code takes a minute to repoint, because the printed artwork points at a fixed short link and it is the link that changes, never the print. Of every hundred codes made on our platform this year, three were static.
Retarget the people who touched it
The scan goes through a redirect you control and lands on a page you control, so that page can carry your Meta, Google, LinkedIn or TikTok tags. Somebody who picked up a handout at your stand becomes an audience you can advertise to for the rest of the quarter, once they have consented.
Let the scanner tell you what they want
Send the scan to a one-screen page with three choices: book a meeting, send me the case study, or not now but stay in touch. Declared intent is worth more than anything you can infer from a scan record, and it costs the reader one tap.
Then act on what they picked. Somebody who chose "not now" should not get the same follow-up as somebody who booked a meeting.
Use the box you already ship
Plenty of SaaS companies already send something physical: a device, a POS terminal, a sensor, a branded onboarding kit. That insert reaches somebody who has already paid you and is trying to get your product working, which is the most attention you will ever have from them.
One of our customers, a home-appliance manufacturer, has codes across its packaging, its catalogs and its after-sales material. The most-scanned code in the whole account is the one printed on the product for registering a complaint. People scan when they want something, and after they buy they want plenty.
Most companies put a discount code in the box. Better uses are the setup video, the warranty or licence registration, the referral, and the review request once the product is working for them.
Set the right expectations
A scan gives you the time, the device, the operating system and browser, and an approximate city from the IP address. You get a name or an email only if the person types one into the page.
The one field you control is the code ID, so how you name your codes decides how much you can learn. Name them after the object and the place it sits. A code named after the campaign tells you nothing you didn't already know.
EU and UK rules generally require clear, separate consent before you fire retargeting pixels, and a pre-ticked box does not count. Several US states instead require a working opt-out. Log the scan on your own server at the redirect, so your measurement works regardless, and fire the advertising pixels only after someone consents. Your retargetable audience will be smaller than your scan count.
One more, about conversion rather than law. If the card promised an ROI summary, show the summary first and ask for the email second. Put a form in front of what you promised and a warm scan turns into a bounce.
Where I would start
Split the codes before you split the budget. Give the stand poster, the handout, the leave-behind and the follow-up card one code each, name each after the object and where it sits, and you will come out of one show knowing which of the four earned its place. The tooling costs far less than the print run, and setup takes an afternoon.
Say on the print what the code is for. "Scan for the three-slide ROI summary" gives somebody a reason to reach for their phone. "Scan me" asks them to gamble.
Then read the whole report rather than the headline number. The device split, the time of day, the city: in our accounts those are where the usable findings sit, and they are usually the things nobody set out to measure.
What you get from a printed code is small and specific: a time, a device, a place. Three columns, on every printed item you own. That is enough to defend the line item, and enough to see which parts of it earn their place.
Have a story from the trenches? Drop us a line at ceo@blastra.io
Related Reading
- Design Partners Trust the Founder. Strangers Trust Other Buyers. - Ami Burstin on what a cold prospect needs before they will take a meeting, which is the same problem as the colleague who was sent your link
- The Rules on Collecting B2B SaaS Reviews - what applies if you chase reviews off the back of an event
- Every Listing You Don't Manage Is a Liability - the third-party pages the forwarded link sends a buyer to