i-nigma: is it winning the 2D barcode race?

Almost a year ago to the day, I wrote a short blog about 2D barcode readers for the iPhone, and today I've just downloaded the best one yet, albeit it only reads one type; the QRcode.

With 3 different types of barcode reader installed on my iPhone, I think I'm fully prepared for the mobile barcode revolution to begin...... er what revolution??

I don't get it, with such a huge amount of phones being capable of running the barcode reader, why don't more Brands and publishers use it?? Especially publishers, it's the perfect link between the printed magazine and rich interactive content. There you are, anywhere, reading a mag, and next to the riveting article there is this small barcode, which with almost one click takes you to some kind of additional rich content; video maybe, or audio, exclusive too, stuff you might even pay extra for, could be an associated competition, or a quiz.

I'm sure a lot of people that read a magazine do so on the train, or bus, even the bog, and they don't have (or want to get out) their laptop. But they do have their mobile device, so its perfect, immediate access to exclusive complementary content, that could have great ROI, and extend the usefulness of the printed publication as well.

Bluetooth Marketing - a story of the bleedin obvious

I was in my favourite clothes shop in Chelmsford shopping centre, chatting to the owner about what I do etc etc, as you do, and I got chatting about Bluetooth Marketing, telling him that to promote his summer sale would be very straight forward with the software and hard ware that I owned. We both got quite animated about testing it out, even though I explained that it probably wouldn't be that effective, without some kind of call to action. But I thought what the hell it would be interesting to see what kind take up could be achieved. So I created a mobile friendly advert 240x320 and off I went with netbook and bluetooth dongle.

To begin with I sat outside Starbucks on a nice sunny day with a coffee and watched the people go by for an hour or so. It was mid week but still quite busy and it didn't take long to discover 100 devices to which I delivered 11 messages. Pretty good I thought.

What could we achieve on a busy Saturday for a whole day. The bluetooth systems was all set, and I left it to do its thing all day, however on returning at 5.30 that day, was surprised to see I had only discovered 934 devices and delivered only 4 adverts - just under 0.5%.

Over the next couple of weeks I tried a few other different days and locations of the netbook. What was very obvious was the location of the shop, which was very much at one end of town, had a significantly lower footfall than in the centre, strangely where Starbucks was!

However, regardless of how many, or how quickly devices were detected, on average I did not get far past 0.5% delivered adverts.

When the message was delivered to a device, the user could see the name of the shop that the advert was coming from, and decide whether to accept or decline, so I don't think we were being too "spammy", and if the user had already declined, they wouldn't get sent another message if they walked into the Bluetooth zone again.

So it was an interesting experiment, which just adds more weight to the fact that users need a good strong call to action and incentive to accept and respond to bluetooth marketing, something that is difficult to do in an open high street, but very simple to do at an event.

If anyone is interested to see the full stats of the experiment, and to hear what ROI I achieved, please feel free to contact me.