Time to make new business cards..... with QR codes...

According to those in the know over in the US, half of marketers are already using 2D bar codes as part of their overall marketing strategy and 86 percent plan to use the technology in the future, so says a new report from Scanbuy Inc.

Over 100 marketers in industries such as healthcare, retail and entertainment indicated that a surge in code publishing and consumer scanning is encouraging them to take a chance on 2D bar codes.

“It is great to see that marketers are already integrating codes into their campaigns,” said David Javitch, vice president of marketing of Scanbuy, New York. “Fifty percent of marketers responded that are already using codes to engage consumers and 92 percent of the respondents stating that they are aware of 2D codes.

We dont know how high it is in Britain but we would hope not below 75%.

“Many of those are using a paid service to manage and track their codes, and they were 50 percent more satisfied than those using a freeware generator,” he said. “This just shows that if you think about QR Codes in a strategic way, then you will see better results and a strong ROI.”

Open source QR codes are good becuase they are free - like the ones generated at www.bit.ly - and you can monitor them too.

The report shows Marketers are gravitating toward open source code formats with 61 percent reporting using open source code formats, including 45 percent for QR codes, 16 percent for Datamatrix, 14 percent for Microsoft Tag, 12 percent for EZcode and 11 percent for Snap Tag.

The top three content choices that the codes link to are product details, promotions and coupon offers.

The top three media placement choices are magazines and newspapers, direct mail and product packaging.

Wide compatibility was named as one of the most important factors for a successful campaign among the 50 percent of respondents currently implementing 2D barcodes. This means the code format should be compatible with the largest number of bar code scanning apps.

Access to analytics from the scans, including basic usage and user demographics, was also named as an important factor.

Additionally, marketers say they should be able to edit the code or access it at anytime from a Web-based platform. Which would be a great addition and something we are looking at with goAugmented - the little augmented reality development company based in Manchester which I help run.

We have realised that AR will be the killer to QR once QR is widely used - as AR is like the QR code with the need for a black and white box.

Scanbuy expects both the quantity and the quality of QR code marketing grow considerably in 2012.

And I hope it does. The more QR the more AR will happen as well.

However, I am still amazed at some very silly placements of QR codes....

Check it :)

If you havent noticed it yet - this is the otherside of electrified tram lines... so to scan in the code you would have to risk life and limb! Classic....