Elevate Your Product Packaging with QR Codes

Brands are continuously looking for ways to get an advantage in this hyper-competitive business landscape. Product packaging has emerged as a lucrative touchpoint to grab consumer attention and boost engagement and loyalty. 

This has led to the rise of intelligent product packaging. Brands across industries, especially CPG, pharma, and food, have implemented innovative product packaging to enhance user experience. The global smart packaging industry is projected to reach $26.7 billion by 2024, growing at a CAGR of 10.6%. 

QR codes make product packaging more effective by bridging the online-offline gap and allowing users to engage with your brand with a single scan. Create QR codes for packaging with QRCodeChimp.

Here’s all you need to know about using QR codes to give your users an immersive product packaging experience. 

What is smart packaging? 

Smart product packaging includes packaging systems with embedded sensor technologies like QR codes, RFID, etc. It enables you to share product information, boost customer engagement, track product quality and freshness, increase customer safety, and more. 

QR codes for product packaging

Traditionally, product packaging comprised barcodes, a predecessor to QR codes. Line barcodes could hold only limited data (12 digits). QR codes are an upgrade to traditional barcodes. They can carry up to 4,000+ characters of information, including URLs, contact information, multimedia, etc. Hence, QR codes have replaced line barcodes and revolutionized product packaging. 

Here’s why brands need QR codes in product packaging:

Higher customer engagement

QR codes on product packaging enable you to achieve high customer engagement levels throughout the customer lifecycle. Putting QR codes on product packaging and linking them to your website, social media, etc., can go a long way in increasing customer engagement.

Seamless data collection

Data is the modern-day fuel in today’s era, and QR codes enable you to collect data seamlessly. When a user scans a QR code, their scan gets registered, along with their location and device information. Hence, you can collect valuable customer data and make informed decisions.

Higher transparency

Customers are smarter than ever, and they want to know everything about all the products they buy. However, product packaging has limited space, so you can only put a certain amount of information on it. QR codes resolve this hurdle. Manufacturers can put up QR codes and link them to in-depth product information for increased transparency.

Customer engagement

QR codes on product packaging enable you to achieve high customer engagement levels throughout the customer lifecycle. Putting QR codes on product packaging and linking them to your website, social media, etc., can go a long way in increasing customer engagement.

One-click feedback

Collecting customer feedback is critical, and QR code packaging makes it smoother. A feedback QR code on product packaging will enable consumers to give feedback, helping you improve your product.

Instant customer support

Manufacturers can also put up vCard plus QR codes on product packaging to share contact information and offer customer support. Consumers can scan the code to reach out to the support team and present their queries.

Step-by-step guide to using QR codes in product packaging

Brands must ensure that their product packaging strategy integrates into their overall marketing and branding initiatives. Therefore, it’s crucial to formulate a robust QR code packaging strategy.

Follow these steps to use QR codes in packaging:

Step 1. Determine the purpose of QR codes

QR codes serve many purposes, so figure out why you want to use QR code packaging. Do you want to increase website traffic or social media following? Are you looking to streamline customer support? Delve into the use cases of QR codes and determine how they can add value to your business. 

Step 2. Choose the right messaging

Your QR codes should go hand-in-hand with your overall product packaging. Therefore, it’s crucial to align them with your product’s messaging and positioning. For example, if your product aims to create a sense of community by boosting social media engagement, the QR code should direct users to social media or other community channels. 

Step 3. Decide the size and placement

The next step is to choose the right size and placement of the QR code. A QR code should be at least 0.8 x 0.8 inches in size, and you can increase it as needed. For placement, try to put the QR code at the front of the product packaging to catch people’s attention. 

Step 4. Give your QR code a perfect look

Now, let’s come to aesthetics. You need to make sure your QR code gets more scans, and you can do it by creating a visually appealing QR code. QRCodeChimp offers various shapes, colors, and stickers to make your QR codes unique and compelling. 

Step 5. Track its scans

Last, track the scans on your QR codes. QRCodeChimp provides in-depth analytics, including the number of scans and time-wise and location-wise analysis. This data will help you measure the performance of your QR code campaigns and make informed decisions. 

Use cases: Brands nailing QR code packaging

Several brands have implemented QR codes in packaging to increase transparency and customer engagement. Let’s look at some brands using QR code packaging.

Hershey’s

Hershey’s included SmartLabel QR Codes on its Kisses Milk Chocolate to spread awareness of the ingredients and increase transparency. Consumers could scan the code to learn about the ingredients in the product, helping them make informed purchase decisions.

Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola incorporated dynamic QR Codes on their products with fresh content that offered an immersive consumer experience. This led to high customer engagement and loyalty.

Huhtamaki

Huhtamaki, a food packaging supplies and materials company, promoted recycling using QR code packaging. Upon scanning the QR code, users would get redirected to a webpage educating them about the importance of recycling and how they could do it.

Nestle

Nestle, like Hershey’s, included a QR on the Nestle Pack to direct users to their website and view nutritional information. Hence, the users could scan the QR code to learn about product ingredients.

Pepsi

Pepsi incorporated AR QR codes on its bottles as a part of its annual summer campaign. When users scanned the codes, they got redirected to a Snapchat-like augmented reality environment where they could click pictures with stickers and filters.

Wrap up

QR codes are the future of product packaging, and brands should use QR code packaging to engage consumers across their lifecycle. QR code packaging enables you to share information, increase transparency, collect feedback, and increase customer engagement.

QRCodeChimp allows you to create custom QR codes for product packaging and track their scans.