A guide on how scanning a campaign QR code is tracked back to Penny Black
About QR codes
Each QR code generated through Penny Black is unique to the customer & order. This means that when a customer scans a QR code on your insert, we record it in the Penny Black platform.
QR codes are added through our Artwork Builder tool rather than in the design itself - without Penny Black generated, QR code tracking won’t be possible.
QR code tracking links
The QR code will first take the customer to a tracking link on our platform to record the scan, and then instantly redirect them to the landing page specified in the campaign configuration.
Our tracking URLs are designed to be short, making the QR codes easy to scan and look less “busy” on your inserts. They also retain part of your brand name so that the customer still trusts the URL if it is displayed to them on their device e.g.
https://your-merchant-name.scan-qr.codes/XYZ123ABC456
The front portion, your-merchant-name defaults to a version of your merchant name that works in a URL. e.g. “Paul’s Clothing” would become pauls-clothing and the full URL would be:
https://pauls-clothing.scan-qr.codes/XYZ123ABC456
This merchant name prefix is configurable and can be changed at any time via the Settings in the Penny Black merchant app. Go to the Print & Scan tab:
Avoiding duplicate scan events
We record a scan event for every time an individual QR code is scanned unless it has been scanned in the previous 60 seconds. We assume that scans within this timeframe are duplicates - that either the user was intending the same action/visit, or this was caused by a technical issue with the device.