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Making Tracks: Signage, QR Codes, and Customer Journey Analytics

QR codes are great for “making print interactive,” but in today’s high-data marketing environment, they also have a more important purpose: making print measurable.

Monday, June 19, 2017

Quick Response (QR) codes are not a particularly new technology; in their current form, they date from the early 1990s (QR codes were originally developed to track auto parts during manufacturing), but it wasn’t until the mid 2000s that they started appearing on printed materials, and even then they were not widely recognized or understood. When I sold my house in 2010, I added a QR code to my lawn sign that when scanned launched a website that had photos of the interior. My real estate agent at the time looked at me like I had just beamed down from the Enterprise.

Since then, it has become fairly common to see posters and display graphics like this one that feature a QR code that, in the case of real estate signage, launches a virtual tour of the property.

Again, this is nothing particularly new (indeed, this sign has been up for about four years).


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About Richard Romano

Richard Romano is Managing Editor of WhatTheyThink.  He curates the Wide Format section on WhatTheyThink.com. He has been writing about the graphic communications industry for more than 25 years. He is the author or coauthor of more than half a dozen books on printing technology and business. His most recent book is “Beyond Paper: An Interactive Guide to Wide-Format and Specialty Printing.

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