Digital bytes

Questionable codes

One of the most noticeable trends in the plant marketplace is the rapid proliferation of QR (quick response) codes. The QR code is a two-dimensional barcode that can hold many times more information than a traditional one-dimensional barcode in a smaller space. The codes have become popular tools in mobile marketing and advertising campaigns.

Green industry firms are printing these codes on tags so that consumers can scan them with smartphones and find a wealth of plant information at their fingertips.

As smartphone adoption increases, more consumers have QR code scanners in their pockets as they stroll through their local garden center.

But the results of a recent survey indicate QR codes are not yet widely used among home gardeners, the target audience.

Brands get bank from Pinterest

Pinterest is a social network that allows users to visually share and discover new interests by posting ­— known on the network as ‘pinning’ — images or videos to their own or others’ boards and browsing what other users have pinned. Think of it as a virtual cork board and you’ll be pretty close.

Piqora, a marketing and analytics firm, analyzed hundreds of brands on Pinterest for nine months last year and found that, on average, a pin generates 78 cents in sales. This is up by 25 percent from Q4 2012. Other key stats from the research:

• On average, a pin drives two site visits and six page views.
• On average, a Pinterest pin generates more than 10 repins – pins are 100 times more viral than tweets, which on average only get retweeted 1.4 percent
   

For more: www.piqora.com