Quick Service Restaurants: Improve Sales and the Guest Experience with Mobile Barcodes

Serve Mobile Barcodes for an Invaluable Direct Real-time Connection to Your Customer

Quick service restaurants (QSRs) around the world are using mobile barcodes to create highly targeted one-to-one mobile marketing campaigns that work, delivering unprecedented response rates that drive more customers through your doors and increase sales. Mass marketing is replaced with individual, relevant and timely offers. But what is a mobile barcode? What kind of programs can they support? And why are they at the heart of some of the most successful QSR marketing campaigns?

What is a mobile barcode?

A mobile barcode is simply an electronic version of any barcode that can be delivered, stored and displayed on the screen of a mobile phone. While 1D or 2D barcode symbologies can be utilized, it is the 2D barcode that delivers the most value. The typical 1D barcode is a single string of numbers and letters that represent a single piece of data, such as a specific coupon. But 2D barcodes are not only much smaller, they have a much greater data capacity, enabling the collection of the detailed information required to develop more personalized and relevant offers for every one of your customers.

What types of programs can you create?

Today’s QSRs are using mobile barcodes to replace paper coupons and game pieces as well as plastic loyalty and gift cards. But applications are limited only by your imagination. For example, you could sponsor mobile donations for local families in need at holiday time or disaster victims, or create custom-branded games for mobile phones that provide constant brand exposure to players.

Why mobile barcodes work: The most direct customer connection possible

Mobile barcodes allow you to market directly to your customer’s personal mobile phone — the one device that is nearly always in a pocket or purse. This new direct channel of communication allows you to reach your customer instantly. And with integrated GPS technology in virtually every mobile phone, you can also execute marketing programs based on the location of your customer — for example, when they are driving by or inside your restaurant — allowing you to impact your customers at the most appropriate point of decision.

If you build it, will they come?

The move towards a paperless electronic society has everyone looking for new ways that the mobile phone — the one device they always carry — can simplify their lives. Mobile barcode programs help your customers save both time and money. The proof is in the numbers. According to a recent survey, 82 percent of consumers believe that mobile coupons are more convenient than printing out paper coupons.1 As a result, the overall market for mobile coupons is flourishing. 55 percent of smartphone shoppers used a mobile coupon in Q4 20152 and a new report from Juniper Research found that there will be over one billion mobile coupon users by 2019, up from just under 560 million in 2014.