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QR Codes - In or Out?

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#411
Ryan Everson said:
10 years later and dare I say, QR codes are making a comeback!

Restaurants across the US are ditching physical menus for online menus and subsequently training the public for us on how to use their phone's camera to scan the restaurant menu's QR code.

Now that a higher percentage of Americans know how to scan a QR code thanks to COVID, could there be a use case in the dealership where they make sense?

A QR code to easily leave an online review seems like just one of the possibilities.
Click to expand...

I'm 100% positive that I commented on this thread back in the day head over heels in love with the idea of QR codes at the dealership.

To your point @Ryan Everson let's not forget how Snap Codes, Spotify Codes, et al. have pretty much made the idea of scanning something with your phone to accomplish a goal a fairly ubiquitous action. Add in that you don't need a dedicated app any longer and the fact that you can dress up / brand your QR codes more than you used to be able to — what you end up with is a much more viable mechanism for engaging a shopper than your did in 2010.

Just spitballing here, but what about a QR code that will allow an after hours tire kicker to be virtually greeted by your team, or watch a review video of the model they're looking at, or get a value on their trade? This took me all of 30 seconds to make, give it a scan :)
di-qr-code.png
 
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#412
Well Phil, here we are 9 years later, niether you or I work for the same company we did when you first wrote this post, but we can still talk about QR Codes. I think the biggest change is that with a smart phone you no longer need an app to scan them. You can actually scan a QR code with the native camera on iphones and android devices to bring up the url that the QR code will take you too. Beeing a geek I know that, but not sure the average phone user knows how that works. Even so the largest automotive dealer group in the USA puts a QR code on every used vehciles window sticker telling the customer to "Scan for Price." I see this done by more and more Auto dealers so that they can always have the price on the vehicle (received by scanning QR Code) be consistant with the advertised price on their website. Nice job by dealers that do this to keep consistancey and pricing transparency. Even more important today than ever before.

It still may not be the most universdally used tool out there, but the company I work for is defineatly seeing more use of the QR code by Auto dealers. It's been over 9 years since Phil started this thread but it could be fun to talk about it again.
 
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#413
I can honestly say I've never engaged and cannot remember a single instance in which I would have used a QR code in my everyday life until very recently. A few months go as we re-opened businesses here in BC I went to lunch at a local restaurant. Instead of physical menus, they simply had a QR code on the table that you scan to bring up their menu on your phone (removing all physical contact / possibility of transfer of Covid-19). It was actually pretty clever and very useful... I could see this becoming the norm moving forward (saves money, easier to update, less risk with the current pandemic).

Who knows, perhaps there are use cases at the dealership now (i.e: service?).
 
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#415
Josh S said:
I can honestly say I've never engaged and cannot remember a single instance in which I would have used a QR code in my everyday life until very recently. A few months go as we re-opened businesses here in BC I went to lunch at a local restaurant. Instead of physical menus, they simply had a QR code on the table that you scan to bring up their menu on your phone (removing all physical contact / possibility of transfer of Covid-19). It was actually pretty clever and very useful... I could see this becoming the norm moving forward (saves money, easier to update, less risk with the current pandemic).

Who knows, perhaps there are use cases at the dealership now (i.e: service?).
Click to expand...
The silver lining in the pandemic was that everyone knows how to use QR codes now. Our customers are capturing ups opportunities at record rates with our codes. (disclosure, I'm a vendor CEO in the QR code lead gen space)
 
#418
john.quinn said:
The other day someone posted a Venmo QR code on a work channel (contributions to a baby shower or something like that). Held my phone's camera up to the screen, and bingo... connected to the right person. Quick, easy.
Click to expand...
Single use QR codes like that are super easy and quick to use. More and more people are comfortable with seeing the code and scanning, provided the value exchange is good.

In the Venmo case, scan and give a gift to the baby shower. Easy and convenient. A win / win for all.

At the dealership, the buyer/guest will scan codes to get vehicle info, market pricing or to easily check out a vehicle's history report. Great for the buyer but in the end, they get to shop anonymously and the dealership gets nothing (well, very little). Win for the buyer, but not for the dealership. Don't get me wrong, this is an improved buying experience for sure! The visit to the lot delivers information to the buyer right on their mobile and they love that. The VDP view QR code that your DMS or web platform provides doesn't deliver leads but they do help improve the overall customer experience on the lot.

A big problem for dealerships today is poor dealership conversion rates. You get people to your rooftop, but the conversion rate from the visit to customer is low. Buyers have all sorts of protection behaviors built in - "just looking" (and they'll discard the business card your sales person gives them) or if you're a blue law state dealership and all those Sunday shoppers that come to your lot when you're closed. You paid good marketing money to get them to your dealership, converting those visits to customers is a hidden gold mine that many rooftops fail to capitalize on.

But what if you could turn all those visits into solid leads AND provide a great shopping experience for the buyer? Thats what I do (well, its what my company does) with our CarCodez QR codes.

I personally don't like vendors pitching in forums, but the bottom line is that dealerships are leveraging our QR codes for lead gen that ends up with increased unit sales, pre-owned vehicle acquisitions, SMS marketing, service promotions/scheduling and more.

QR codes had a slow start 10 years ago, but today they're delivering results for both buyers and dealerships.
 
#419
This QR Code thread started in 2011 and is now 42 pages. It has been a painful one for me as I have not believed in QR Codes for dealership marketing. I couldn't get on board because it was such a geek thing before restaurant menus forced the "normies" to use them. We spent a decade talking about QR Codes in this thread <--- proof the DealerRefresh community is ahead of its time!

Well, I finally bit the QR Code bullet. We are automating their creation in a mail piece to past buyers and service customers to deliver them to a personalized trade/sell experience at FRIKINtech.

Can't wait to share some engagement numbers.

Mailer.png
 
#420
We added QR Codes to our lettermail 4 or 5 years ago (against my preference at the time).
It was a slow start, but we've definitely seen more engagement now than pre-covid. It's nothing crazy, but people scan more often than they type in a URL on a printed letter.

We're also using them at hosted events, so customers scan the QR code to register themselves for the campaign, which adds them as a prospect to the dealership automatically. Now that everyone understands how they work, it's become a really convenient tool - customers tend to have autofill on their phone so when they scan, they click 1 button to autofill all their contact info and hit submit.
 
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