Providing a more interwoven shopping experience for the modern customer
As Associate Account Director at Marketing Werks, Peter Strum had become increasingly aware of the transformation
that smartphones were bringing about in retail. Although e-commerce was on the rise, customers weren’t showing an
either/or preference while choosing between physical in-store shopping and other online methods. They didn’t shop
exclusively in-store—and the same applied to online shopping too.
For Peter, it was during the attempt to find the area in between that QR Codes seemed like the ideal
physical-to-digital engagement medium. Online sales are more likely to happen via the mobile device—precisely 3X
more likely—and given that smartphones had native QR Code scanning capabilities built into the camera app, it made
all the more sense to include QR Codes in their experiential marketing efforts.
“We’re trying to evolve our approach in how we communicate to our audience. By bridging the gap between
online and offline shopping we’re able to create a more interconnected experience for shoppers.”
Marketing Werks has leveraged QR Codes primarily as a physical-to-digital portal at touchpoints like in-store
signages and demo stalls inside retail stores.
“We’re placing QR Codes on in-store signages to drive more connectivity through the mobile device. This is
important because e-commerce sales via smartphones are seeing an exponential rise. It also drives more synergy
between our marketing efforts, helps us reach end-users better, and thereby increase sales for our clients.”
Using Beaconstac for creating immersive shopper experiences
Peter tracks performance indicators like engagement rates, return on ad spend, and click-through-rates in addition to
accurately mapping sales lifts to different in-store executions. As the person responsible for Marketing Werks'
shopper marketing initiatives, Beaconstac’s QR Code solution seemed like the perfect fit—both for delivering
engaging experiences as well as for tracking campaign outcomes.
They’ve been able to deploy QR Codes easily and efficiently for in-store campaigns and expanding customer reach for
clients. Sam’s Club, Clorox, and Stop&Shop are three clients for whom Marketing Werks has leveraged Beaconstac’s QR
Code solution to drive engagement.
Creating a purely ‘digital’ Sam’s Club sampling corner with QR Codes
For Sam’s Club, the membership-only wholesale retail chain owned by Walmart, Peter included QR Codes for both
in-store events as well as signages. A primary use-case has been a purely digital, no-contact sampling experience
that does not require any demo personnel to be present.
Unlike traditional sampling campaigns found in most retail stores, Sam’s Club’s Taste and Tips nationwide demo
program included stalls for products that were in the ‘non-demoable’ category. Also, given the circumstances of the
COVID pandemic, the program was expanded to cater to customers who wished to digitally experience a product demo
without any contact, even if a physical product demo was possible.
To cover both scenarios, Peter’s plan was to run digitally focused in-store demonstrations with Beaconstac’s QR Codes
as their physical-to-digital portal of choice. The idea was to overcome the challenges of not being able to show how
a product tastes or feels like physically—and provide some semblance of the same in a digital form. This was done
through live video demos where ‘virtual’ stall workers provide a walkthrough of the product and also cover some of
its little known use-cases. This was more engaging than pre-recorded video content, and seemed more like an actual,
in-person demo as well.
Deploying QR Codes for Clorox’s ‘bleach’ awareness campaign
Marketing Werks has also leveraged QR Codes as an engagement tool for Clorox’s bleach education program during the
height of the COVID pandemic.
Given that sanitizer and disinfectant shelves were getting cleared rapidly due to hoarding, Clorox wanted to reach
customers through an awareness campaign about how bleach, when diluted, can be used as a DIY disinfectant.
Peter deployed QR Codes that linked to awareness content both in-store as well as online. Beaconstac’s QR Codes were
strategically placed on in-store signages near bleach shelves and empty disinfectant shelves to drive customers to
buy more Clorox products.
Apart from the awareness campaign, Marketing Werks has also deployed Beaconstac QR Codes as gateways to in-ad
coupons that customers can avail digitally. It was in this campaign that Clorox garnered the most engagement
through the QR Code channel—on flyer material—either shipped directly to customers or placed at the entrance of
stores.
Stop & Shop’s campaign: QR Codes as a portal to an omnichannel retail experience
Another instance where Peter has effectively utilized QR Codes was a campaign for the retailing giant Stop & Shop.
The campaign objective was oriented towards driving more traffic to Stop & Shop—both online and offline—by reaching
out to a new customer segment.
In this particular case, the targeted audience comprised travelers on their way to vacation destinations in the
Hamptons. Since people had to ferry to get to the island and would be spending time onboard, Peter sent out an
on-site team to hand out flyers that had QR Codes on them. People could scan the QR Code, directly place their
orders online and have it delivered, or even place their order online and pick up the items in-store.
According to Peter, QR Codes were the ideal physical-to-digital channel for facilitating an omnichannel experience
for the audience they were targeting:
“Shopping for groceries is the last thing that vacationers want to think about. We wanted to exploit this
fact by providing a seamless and convenient shopping experience for travelers onboard the ferry. With QR Codes
becoming a popular physical-to-digital channel, they could simply scan with their smartphone and have different
omnichannel shopping options in a matter of seconds.”
Seeing better engagement numbers with Beaconstac QR Codes
Across all their clients who have utilized the QR Code channel for varying use-cases and campaigns, Marketing Werks
has received over 190,000+ scans in around 500 locations in the U.S. And amongst these scans, they have been able to
reach nearly 75,000+ unique users through the shopper marketing initiatives outlined above.
Peter’s team has also been able to attribute sales lifts and other KPIs that they track like return on ad spend,
click through rates, and engagement rates more accurately to specific in-store signages and executions. This was
previously a big challenge:
“It was difficult for us to link any sales lift that we saw with our clients to any particular in-store
experience that we provide at the retail level. Now, with QR Codes, we can communicate more clearly to our clients
and basically say that X% increase in sales can be mapped to a specific campaign.”
Having seen the kind of traffic and engagement that Beaconstac has helped their clients unlock, Marketing Werks is
planning on expanding their usage of QR Codes and exploring more features that the Beaconstac platform has to offer.
Multiple users with designated access, bulk QR Code creation and uploads, Beaconstac API for directly creating
analytics dashboards, integrations for automating workflows are all on their QR Code agenda for the future.
