QR Codes on Flyers

Offer something that survives the bin

The flyer that converts is not the one with more information. It is the one where scanning gives the reader a reason not to throw the paper away, because the value has moved onto their phone.

• A discount code they can use later, which is the single highest-converting flyer scan in every category that has tested it
• Event RSVP or a calendar entry, so the date is in their phone before they reach the corner
• The menu or the price list, for anything a passer-by is deciding about
• Ordering, which turns a leaflet into a transaction rather than a reminder
• A short video, for a product whose value a flyer cannot explain in the space available

An unlabelled square gets ignored. One line of type beside it, naming what the reader gets, is the difference between a two percent and a low-double-digit scan rate.

Print rules

• 1.5 to 2 cm. A flyer is held at 20 to 30 cm, so the code does not need to be large; what it needs is to be crisp.
• Keep it clear of the fold. A folded flyer that has been in a pocket has a crease exactly where the paper was weakest, and a crease through the pattern will not decode.
• Matte finish, or a matte varnish patch over the code area. Flyers are the most gloss-heavy short-run print there is, and gloss under a shop light is a mirror.
• Put the code in a consistent corner, usually bottom right, near the call to action rather than orphaned in the opposite corner from it.
• Leave the quiet zone empty, with no background photograph running under the pattern.

One code per distribution point

This is the part most leafleting never gets. The artwork stays identical; only the code changes:

• Street handout on a given corner, and a different one for a different corner
• Café and shop counters, one code per venue
• Letterbox drop, one per street or estate
• Inside the bag at point of sale, which reaches buyers rather than passers-by
• Event and stall handouts

After a week the scan report answers a question the trade has argued about for decades: which pitch, which street, which venue produced anything. Give the codes names by location before the first print run, because retrofitting names onto forty of them is a job nobody finishes.

The leftover box

Flyers are printed in thousands and used in hundreds. A year later the same box comes out for another event, and a static code in it points at a page that was taken down two campaigns ago.

A dynamic code means the leftovers keep working: the spring offer becomes the autumn offer, the dead landing page becomes the current one, and nothing is reprinted to make it true.

Where flyers beat every other surface

The person holding it is standing still, has their phone in the other hand, and is deciding what to do in the next ten minutes. No poster, no banner and no billboard gets that combination. It is worth designing the scan for that moment specifically rather than pointing it at a homepage and hoping.