Glamour magazine, Bud Light, Office Depot, Toyota – these four brands certainly have no central product connection. They do, however, have one thing very squarely in common. All are testing SpyderLynk’s brand marketing or social SnapTags to engage with mobile consumers and to connect mobile users with similar interests and, help spread the word to those users’ friends and family. Barcode.com recently took a closer look at this unique marketing tool.

How Social SnapTags Work

SpyderLynk encodes links from companies to Facebook or Twitter, and places the icons on advertisements so consumers can “like” or “follow” a brand and share it with their friends electronically. Customers have the option to either scan or snap and send a picture of the tag. The app works with Androids and iPhones, as well as standard mobile camera phones.

Glamour magazine incorporated SnapTags in its September 2011 issue, offering readers and advertisers a unique way to interact. As readers scan the uniquely graphic SnapTag icon, information about editorial content and/or ads is shared with their friends. At the same time, the advertiser receives the contacts, facilitating follow-up marketing. Some of the participating advertisers in that issue were Zappos, GAP, Lancome, Nivea, Skinny Cow, Dr. Scholls, and HTC.

This is the Glamour Friends & Fans icon for the September 2011 edition. 

The program is enhanced by incentives to share the information. Encoded are various offers, from discounts to coupons and actual prizes, including trips and gift cards. Recipients, as well, have an opportunity to link to the brand to access the offers.

The technology was developed to provide an alternative to QR (Quick Response) Code marketing that is somewhat limited in its outreach to consumers in that it typically drives mobile users to a website and relies on mobile phones with scanners to do so. SnapTags’ 2D mobile barcode technology delivers content, information and offers directly to the consumer’s mobile phone. The only hardware required is a standard mobile phone camera.

Office Depot Offers Shopper Incentives Via SnapTags

The Office Depot ran a test of SpyderLynk’s branded SnapTags from July through September 2011 to coincide with back-to-school sales and offers. Rewards included a $100 Office Depot mobile gift card, redeemably instantly in-store, as well as special mobile coupons to save on back-to-school essentials. The company layered the SnapTag promo with TV, in-store, out-of-home print advertising, email and online advertising on Facebook, Twitter and their website, officedepot.com.

What Office Depot particularly liked about this program was the immediacy of the reward. As noted by Diane Nick, VP of Marketing for Office Depot, “…customers are able to redeem their awards on the spot with no waiting, no hassles and no paper coupons.”

Benefits to Marketers

According to the SpyderLynk site, there are multiple reasons major companies are choosing SnapTags and Social SnapTags to enhance and expand their marketing outreach. These include an increase in social databases from mass marketing; an ability to track Snaps, Likes, Follows and Shares; a way to drive sales through incentives; an interactive B2C promotional platform; a fund-raising tool; and an integration of social marketing with traditional and mobile marketing for increased sales.

SpyderLynk activates branding to drive marketing results. Based in Denver, Colorado, SpyderLynk was founded in 2006 and can be found online at www.spyderlynk.com, or followed on Facebook, Twitter and through the #SnapTag hashtag.

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