QR Codes on business cards. Is this actually a thing now?

2020 provided an environment in which contactless transfer of information became a practical necessity. All of a sudden we found ourselves in a world where handing printed collateral like a brochure or menu from person to person was exactly what we didn’t want to do.

Enter QR Codes.

Well, not exactly. QR Code technology didn’t make its debut in 2020 — it has been around since the mid 1990s. It was invented to solve asset and information tracking in the manufacturing industry.

However, when phones with cameras combined with mobile broadband (4G) in the early 2010s, every brand and marketer tried to work QR Code technology into their consumer experience as a way to increase engagement and information consumption. Despite their good intentions, they struggled to gain mass adoption and QR Code technology was largely seen as a gimmick that nobody paid much attention to.

Fast forward to the contactless world of 2020. The QR Code emerged as the go-to solution for a safe, convenient method of distributing information. What helped usher it along was the fact that mobile OS developers (Apple, Google) built QR Code scanning capabilities natively into their operating systems. Consumers no longer needed third-party apps to scan them.

As restaurants started opening back up, it seemed like they all got the same memo: stick a QR Code on the table instead of handing out physical menus. This eliminated a major point of shared contact from the guest experience while providing a really convenient, cost-effective way for the restaurants to keep their menu up to date without having to endure the time and expense of reprinting.

It wasn’t just restaurants. QR Codes re-emerged in retail spaces, ticket booths, and many other interactions where reducing physical contact was key.

Today, in a largely post-pandemic world, consumers have been trained to see QR Codes for what they are: convenient shortcuts to all kinds of valuable information. Some would go so far as to say they’ve even been embraced as a tool that is helping us get back out into the world safely.

As brands, marketers, and advertisers, we have been given a second chance to reap the benefits of this tech on packaging, billboards, brochures, and yes, even business cards.

Benefits

People are curious creatures. Research into the phenomenon of curiosity[1] has shown that information itself is a motivationally salient reward. Smart science people tell me that means we experience pleasure when something makes us curious and then scratches that itch with new information.

The information doesn’t even have to be particularly compelling. The simple act of satisfying our curiosity is enough of an emotional reward. So QR Codes can be enticing at a very fundamental level. They promise easy access to information without giving away much of a teaser.

You want to hand me a brochure? That little voice inside my head says, “Be polite. Take it. You don’t have to read it.” Of course I’ll feel guilty for the paper waste, but at least I wasn’t rude in a business meeting. Offer me a business card, on the other hand, and I don’t even process my reaction. Zero hesitation.

Business cards are incredibly convenient and accessible, unfortunately they’re also very small. By adding a QR code you create an easy path to volumes of information with just a few clicks from the recipient’s phone.

With a QR Code the business card becomes an access card. Scanning the code can instruct the end user’s phone to present all types of information, like a PDF of a whitepaper, a brochure, or video. It can also point to a specific landing page that captures their information so you can follow up with them later, or even supply a linktree that provides one-tap access to any number of resources.

There’s almost no limit to the type of digital information or interactive experience you can present someone with by way of a QR Code. The only requirement is that it can be served over the internet in an app or web browser. And, because the content is all delivered over the internet, it can be updated dynamically at any time. You don’t have to change the QR Code to change the content — that’s a major upside.

Because the interaction with a QR Code happens online, it gives you the ability to add analytics to your business card, which is historically an offline lead generation tool. If you are smart about how you engineer the experience after the scan, you can track exactly what the recipients do in response to receiving the business cards. This will allow you to make your business cards a much more useful part of your sales or marketing funnel.

One word of caution.
QR Codes can contain not only information, but instructions that command your phone to automatically take actions like placing a phone call, sending an email, or loading a website. So some IT experts suggest a healthy dose of skepticism and caution should be used when scanning one[2]. Imagine a world where a bad actor prints out a malicious QR Code and pastes it over a safe one in a public space. This can create a vulnerability to things like identity theft and phishing scams.

In a business card exchange, the likelihood of your QR Code becoming compromised is incredibly low. But just bear this warning in mind as you interact with QR Codes out in the wild.

Recommended Approach

If you’re going to place QR Codes on your business cards, these recommendations will help elevate the experience and make it as effective as possible.

Understand the Endgame
What is the purpose of handing someone a business card in your industry? What do you want them to do? Are you trying to get them to come visit a brick and mortar location? Do you want them to provide additional information about themselves? Are you looking to schedule a follow-up meeting? Identify the desired action up front so you can design the experience and measure the impact.

Customize the Experience
A business card is a pretty personal, 1-to-1 type of communication. The experience after the scan should continue to feel that way. Simply linking someone to the homepage of your website or a 1-to-many landing page would be a poor use of this relationship-building channel. Keep the personal relationship vibe alive as long as you can.

Leverage the Dynamic Nature
Because QR Codes can point to information online, you can print the codes once and then change the content they point to whenever you need to. This provides you with the opportunity to change the message users see when scanning the code depending on your messaging goals at the time. For example, promoting a seasonal sale or encouraging registrations in the months leading up to an annual convention. You can even change the experience from a landing page, to a video, to an app download — or anything else — all on the fly.

Design for Mobile
Your users will be scanning the QR Code on a mobile device, so make sure the experience after the scan is optimized to load quickly on cellular data connections, display perfectly on handheld devices, and lead folks down a path that is 100% designed for mobile use.

Track Engagement
Like any lead generation activity, you should be tracking how your leads progress through the funnel. With your endgame in mind, build in the opportunity to gather metrics about how engaged they’re staying after the scan. Check your results regularly and optimize for the best possible engagement.

Consider Using a Service
If you don’t have an IT infrastructure that can build the full experience in-house, consider using a service like qrty.mobi. They allow you to generate customized QR Codes, provide landing pages, and even report on user activity.

Design Practices

The overall functional design of a QR Code is pretty standardized. The good news is that the standards allow for a lot of customization. You can specify colors, shape, size, style…even branding within a QR Code. It can be done pretty quickly, too. Any of the QR Code generators you can find online will spit out a customized, functional 2D barcode. You don’t have to design them from scratch.

That being said, you always want to apply some common best practices to ensure it works reliably.

Keep it readable
The minimum size is 2cm square, so don’t make it too small. Also, you will want to keep a healthy amount of clear space around the QR code so that the scanning app can isolate it from surrounding elements. This is what’s called the “quiet zone” and it should be at least 4x the width of the QR Code modules.

Play with the color palette
As long as the contrast is high, you can change the QR Code color palette to almost anything. It doesn’t have to stay black and white. It doesn’t have to be all one color, either. The eyes (those three large corner positioning marks you’ve seen on every QR Code) can be a different color than the rest of the modules, for example.

Stay positive
When the background color is darker than the QR Code modules, that’s called an inverted code. It can look cool, but this negative style isn’t widely supported by scanners. So stick with a light background and dark foreground.

Add a logo
In the center of the QR Code is a space that can be used for branding. Add your logo so that you can own the code and help it stand out from others. Alternatively, you can add a frame to your QR Code that carries distinct branding, as well.

Add a CTA
Consider putting “Scan me!” or a similar call to action on or near your QR Code to prompt readers towards the action you want them to take. Get creative with this CTA. The more intriguing it is the better.

Always test!
Once your custom QR Code is in a happy place, test it in multiple apps and on multiple devices. This will ensure you won’t run into issues in the field. This is especially important when ordering, say, a run of 2,000 business cards!

QR Codes are finally a thing.

It’s finally the QR Code’s time to shine! The technology has been adopted to the point where using QR Codes is a frictionless experience for anyone with a phone. Consumers are primed and ready to scan away, eager to find out what’s on the other side of that little matrix of modules. There has never been a better time to put a QR Code on your business card, and business cards are only going to get better at doing business because of it.