DG3 (Jersey City, NJ) isn’t the first graphic communications company to place QR codes on printed matter. But, it may be the industry’s first QR code solution provider to state for the record that underpinning print sales isn’t the solution’s primary objective or even a meaningful measure of its success.
Mobile connectivity is what DG3 is out to promote with QReach, a program soon to go live for a selected customer segment. “We don’t necessarily expect to drive print” with QReach, says Joe Lindfeldt, executive vice president for strategic development. “We’re using print to drive digital engagement.”
When it comes to the way the industry typically implements QR codes, Lindfeldt says, “so much of the dialog is anchored in print. We say, don’t worry about it.” This contrarian approach stems from a belief at DG3—a company with deep roots in financial and business printing—that print is just one of many contexts in which graphic communications can take place.
Print, says Lindfeldt, “is not a medium unto itself—it’s part of a marketing mix. Our strategy is to move content into any visual medium that’s relevant.” He also notes that mobile phones and tablets are rapidly becoming “the primary and most frequent touch points” for graphic communications in online form. That’s the rationale behind QReach, which aims to make QR-coded print the stepping-off point to mobile engagement across the bridge of smart devices that hundreds of millions of people now carry.
The solution, as Lindfeldt describes it, is a turnkey, automated system of QR code management that will work best for customers that already rely on repeat communications in print. After initial setup, users have 24/7 access to their templated documents in a browser window and can specify where QR codes should be positioned upon them. They also can upload whatever digital content—for example, a vCard for contact information, a URL for a landing page, or a link to a video—is to be associated with the customized QR code.
From this point forward, says Lindfeldt, everything is automatic, from preflight and workflow entry to production and distribution of the documents by DG3. A QReach bundle includes code generation, mobile content deployment, testing across all mobile devices, and one full year of content hosting. Pricing, Lindfeldt says, rewards high-volume repeat utilization, although the solution can be scaled for mobile campaigns of any size. DG3 also can provide mobile-optimized landing page design, social media integration, automated e-mail response, metrics tracking, and data analysis.
Lindfeldt says that DG3 will target QReach at financial institutions, mutual funds, publicly held companies, and other “heavily regulated customers” looking for an efficient and regulation-compliant way of fulfilling their reporting requirements via mobile engagement. That’s a potentially huge opportunity for digital outreach because, as Lindfeldt notes, “in any given month, we’re communicating with 25 million shareholders” on behalf of DG3 customers.
The company, which has branches in the U.K. and in several locations in Asia, is committed to mobile engagement as a service offering. It established a digital marketing division for the purpose in 2010, and in the following year, it acquired a company that Lindfeldt calls “the thought leader in QR”: The Ace Group, a Manhattan printer widely known as one of the metro area’s earliest adopters of QR codes and related mobile technologies.
Lindfeldt says that QReach is one of four fundamental modes of mobile engagement that DG3 has either deployed for its customers or shortly will bring to market. The others are near field communications (NFC), which enables tagged printed surfaces to interact with mobile devices; Bluetooth wireless technology, which can be used to drive digital printing equipment; and image recognition, implemented as AR (augmented reality) for camera-equipped smartphones and tablets. Lindfeldt says that DG3 is working on what he describes as “some of the most interesting AR applications in the industry,” including an AR-based, interactive auction catalog.
He’s aware of the skepticism that some of these technologies have encountered, particularly QR-coded print, which has been depicted as a solution that never entirely caught on with consumers. This critique, for example, cites research claiming that 60% of North American consumers who scanned QR codes in a given period did so only once.
Lindfeldt says he’d rather concentrate on the remaining 40% who presumably engaged with QR codes more than once—a favorable augury, he believes, for launching a program like QReach. In any case, he says, what counts is the additional engagement that can be gained at relatively low cost by adding customized QR codes to printed matter.
According to Lindfeldt, consumers of print now understand what QR codes can do and are “becoming less afraid of them” as a result. That will make it easier to turn them into the portals of connectivity that they always were meant to be.
“We really believe in mobile engagement,” Lindfeldt says. “It’s just a matter of getting our customers comfortable with it.”
