Promotional coding: Driving brand engagement and loyaltyThe battle between supermarket brands is fiercer than ever. Budget chains are making buyers question their loyalty to their usual shopping basket items. Brand loyalty and engagement has never been more important.

Promotional coding is playing an important role for the brands that deploy it.

What is promotional coding? Who are the stakeholders? What are the benefits? Read our guide and learn more.

www.domino-printing.com

When were you last stopped in the street by someone asking you how often you purchased a particular consumer product? Or what you think of a particular brand?

The chances are it was a while ago.? IntroductionThe decline in street-corner market research, like many changes today, is driven by digital technology. We buy so many things online, and tell brands so much about ourselves in the process, that there’s little need for it. And even when we ‘go offline’ and actually visit the shops, what we buy tells brands a lot about us.

Supermarket loyalty cards are the most obvious example, but examine the products in your basket and it’s likely you’ll find evidence of another increasingly popular marketing tool – the promotional code.

What is promotional coding?Promotional codes are proving a highly effective way of engaging customers with innovative campaigns. A unique item of alphanumeric data (potentially a 2D or data matrix code), the codes are printed on a product or packaging. They are most often used by food and beverage manufacturers to stimulate consumer interest and engagement with a particular brand. They may, for example, encourage consumers to access online information such as deals, competitions or other creative opportunities. And in the very act of engagement, the consumer will be sharing information – even if it’s only an email address and agreement to receive news or further offers.

Fundamental differencePromotional codes are fundamentally different from traditional codes. The latter provide the security essential to risk mitigation – the management of health and safety, compliance, anti-counterfeit, production line controls, and so on. Promotional codes, on the other hand, serve a customer acquisition and relationship function. They are used to drive brand growth, increase consumer loyalty and cultivate market insight and research – more overtly commercial, brand and cultural drivers.

Typical traceability codes Example of a promotional code

The marketing perspective – brand managers and ad agenciesAs a result, aside from a company’s future performance, brand and marketing managers and advertising agencies are the most obvious beneficiaries. For brand managers, promotional coding can give a significant edge in the marketing arena and an opportunity to increase brand awareness via cross media channels such as microsites or social platforms – especially if it is not being used by competitors.

More importantly, promotional codes are a cost-effective way of gaining valuable insight into consumer behaviour, in the form of granular, validated data. This allows brand owners to extract useful information about consumer demographics – gender, age range and, more crucially, repeat purchases – all of which are vital to the planning of future campaigns.

Advertising agencies, meanwhile, play a crucial role in creating and executing the promotional ideas and concepts themselves. They build the websites where codes are input and redeemed, and buy the media to drive and support the campaign penetration. They are also taking on responsibility for providing the actual promotional code data to be printed and used, a role that was previously the remit of other businesses but is increasingly part of agencies’ one-stop solution.

The engineering challengeThis is all great news for marketers, but amidst the exciting potential it’s important not to underestimate the engineering needed to deliver the promotional codes with 100% accuracy and consistency. Stakeholders should be conscious that any promotional technology needs to be seamlessly integrated with existing or planned automated packaging processes; or that the promotional coding hardware and software will run independently of any existing equipment producing BBE dates and compliance codes.

Production teams do not need additional work and worries on top of their existing demands. The years following the 2008 recession led to leaner manufacturing through cost-reduction and profit maximisation, and with production teams already streamlined, careful packaging equipment and production planning is required to ensure existing product demand can be met.

Hardware – the right tools for the job Domino provides multiple technologies to print promotional codes onto products or packaging – this knowledge, experience and understanding of the manufacturing and packaging environments, influences the promotional application and, as a result, the type of technology deployed.

For example, continuous ink jet (CIJ) is a frequently adopted technology for printing promotional codes onto soft drink cans, while PET bottles are well suited to Domino’s latest i-Tech laser markers. The flexible wrappers around chocolate bars or crisps are ideal for thermal transfer overprinting (TTO) systems. In other words, the choice of coding technology is entirely dependent on the sector and industry in question. Many factors influence this, including the packaging machinery in use, production environment (temperature, humidity), line speeds, stability, as well as the packaging material itself.

Web Service

File Upload

Customer Database

Database

A-SeriesContinuous ink jet printer

D-SeriesLaser

G-SeriesThermal ink jet printer

V-SeriesThermal Transfer Overprinting

User Interface

Code RetrievalService

Serving Unique Codes..

Reset

Time Last Code Sent

30/05/201508:37:38

Last Code Sent

XEF N49KJRP

Printer Status

Healthy

Coding gets closer to consumersPromotional coding has historically been applied where the packaging is made, but this is no longer the case. Changing pack sizes, growing demand from fast-moving societies, digital consumers, higher throughput and greater flexibility mean more coding now happens closer to the end user.

This calls for more robust and reliable automated solutions to apply codes to primary packaging. Systems Integrator, AutoCoding Systems, can set up and control all packaging line devices, including all types of coding and marking equipment. The AutoCoding software solution can deploy the correct set-up and message data, including the delivery and management of unique codes, to all printing devices. AutoCoding’s solutions integrate directly with Domino’s coding and marking equipment, representing a seamless connection of software and hardware without the need for human intervention. This is fundamentally important in securely linking together the various elements of such a project.

Software code deployment

Promotional coding summarySecuring the quality and success of the promotional coding campaign is the ultimate goal. The key is balancing the needs of various stakeholders – brand managers, advertising agencies, production and packaging teams, hardware and software suppliers. Promotional codes are an invaluable asset in today’s fiercely competitive and increasingly digital marketing environment. When they form part of a broader campaign that offers customers more than the product alone, they build trust, loyalty and commitment. Whether sharing knowledge, prizes, or the ethics and values of a brand, promotional codes provide outstanding insights and granular detail about how consumers interact with brands. The empirical data they produce has the power to shape the effectiveness of future campaigns and a brand’s market share.

Domino UK Ltd Tel: 01954 782551 enquiries@domino-uk.com www.domino-printing.com

Trevor Nichols Business Development Manager Domino UK

Mike Hughes Managing Director AutoCoding Systems Ltd