Promotional codes printed on products can engage customers and provide brands with valuable consumer behavior insights. They work by encouraging customers to enter unique codes online for deals, competitions, or other engagement. This drives brand loyalty while also allowing brands to better understand customers. Implementing promotional codes requires balancing the needs of various stakeholders and coordinating hardware, software, production, and marketing to ensure campaign success.

1. Promotional coding:
Driving brand engagement
and loyalty
The 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

2. 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.?
Introduction
The 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.

3. 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 difference
Promotional 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

4. The marketing perspective – brand managers and ad agencies
As 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.

5. The engineering challenge
This 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.

6. 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.

7. Web Service
File Upload
Customer Database
Database
A-Series
Continuous ink jet
printer
D-Series
Laser
G-Series
Thermal ink jet
printer
V-Series
Thermal Transfer
Overprinting
User Interface
Code Retrieval
Service
Serving Unique Codes..
Reset
Time Last Code Sent
30/05/2015
08:37:38
Last Code Sent
XEF N49
KJRP
Printer Status
Healthy
Coding gets closer to consumers
Promotional 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

8. Promotional coding summary
Securing 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