Common Questions & Objections
What If Nobody Scans the QR Code?
Most recipients won't scan it, and that's expected, not a sign the campaign failed. A postcard can still get read, get remembered, and prompt a call or a search for your company weeks later without ever registering as a scan. The QR code is a convenient path for people ready to act immediately, not the only path that counts, which is why it's worth pairing with a simple secondary way to respond.
Practical guide · Published August 22, 2026 · Written by Jeffrey Huis in 't Veld
The honest baseline on scan rates
If the goal is to get every recipient to scan, that goal was set wrong from the start. Most people who receive a piece of business mail, even a relevant, well-targeted one, aren't going to pull out their phone and scan a code the moment they see it. Some are at a desk without their phone nearby. Some read it, set it down, and move on with their day. Some notice it, register the company name, and don't act at all in that moment. None of that means the mailer failed, it means most direct response mechanisms across any channel see the majority of the audience not act immediately, and mail is no exception.
What a scan actually measures
A scan is a useful signal, it tells you someone engaged enough to act right then, and it's the easiest thing to log and report on. But it only captures one kind of response: immediate, digital, and willing to use a phone camera on the spot. It says nothing about the person who read the postcard, didn't scan, and called the number listed instead. It says nothing about the person who set it aside, forgot the QR code existed, and typed your company name into a search bar two weeks later when the problem you mentioned actually came up. Treating scan count as the full measure of whether the campaign worked overstates what that one metric can tell you.
What happens when nobody scans
Even in the case where a specific recipient never scans anything, the piece can still have done real work. Physical mail has a presence that a browser tab or an email doesn't, it sits on a desk, gets picked up more than once, and creates a low-effort kind of brand familiarity. When that person's company later evaluates vendors in your category, or when a colleague asks if anyone's heard of you, having already been on their desk once is worth something, even though nothing about it shows up as a scan in a dashboard. That's harder to attribute cleanly, but it's not imaginary.
Give people another way in
Because not everyone will use a QR code even when they're interested, it's worth giving recipients a second, low-friction way to respond, a phone number or a short, easy-to-remember web address printed clearly on the piece. Someone who's not going to fumble with a camera app might happily call a number they can see at a glance, especially in a B2B context where a phone call sometimes feels more natural than scanning something. This isn't about cramming in more options, it's about matching the response method to how the recipient actually prefers to act. For more on how many calls to action a single piece should carry, see one CTA vs. multiple CTAs on B2B postcards.
When a low scan rate is a real problem
None of this means scan rate never matters. If scans, calls, and direct site visits are all low across a full campaign, that's a genuine signal something isn't landing, whether it's the offer, the targeting, or how clearly the piece communicates what to do next. The point isn't to dismiss a weak response, it's to not treat one number as the whole picture. Look at the combination of engagement signals together before concluding the campaign underperformed, and if they're all quiet, that's worth investigating rather than explaining away.
Frequently asked questions
It varies by audience, offer and targeting quality enough that there's no single figure worth quoting. What matters more than any specific number is whether scans, calls and other signals move together in the direction you'd expect for a well-targeted list.
Not on its own. A QR code costs nothing to include and captures a segment of recipients who want to act immediately. The better move if response feels low is to look at the whole picture, including calls and site visits, before removing a low-friction option.
A dedicated phone number or a simple tracked web address gives you a second channel to attribute response to the campaign. Sales teams asking new inbound contacts how they heard about you is a low-tech but genuinely useful backstop too.
Not by itself. It's one signal among several. A campaign can still be generating awareness, calls and later inbound interest even when scan numbers alone look unremarkable.
Generally yes, since it costs little to include and gives the portion of recipients who want an instant, trackable path exactly that. It just shouldn't be treated as the only path, or as the sole measure of whether the piece worked.
Related topics
Work with Yotru
How Yotru thinks about QR codes and response
Yotru includes a unique, trackable QR code on every postcard by default, but we design each piece with a clear secondary path too, so a recipient who prefers to call or search instead of scanning still has an easy way in. We also help clients look past scan count alone to the fuller set of response signals a campaign generates. .