One of the biggest strengths of connected experiences is also the thing that can make them the most daunting - the huge variety of opportunities of what you can do with them. Where social media, paid advertising, and email campaigns are limited by their medium - connected experiences allow you to build whatever you want, as long as you have that digital touchpoint on your packaging, product, or media.

To help break down this breadth of choices for you - we’ve created a list of 10 of the most popular connected experience formats we’ve seen that should help you get going with your connected packaging programme. Then once you get a bit more comfortable - you can start with some of the real innovative stuff that we’ve been involved in down the years.

1. Competitions

Competition-driven connected experiences are one of the most popular formats that our clients like to do - the biggest reasons being that they’re incredibly flexible, simple to get started, and the results can be significant.

They’re flexible as you can use them for short-term campaigns (product launches, sponsorship/partnership announcements, exclusive merch drops etc), but also as part of an ongoing strategy (monthly prizes, product completions). The simplicity comes from the fact you only need to decide on the 2 factors - the trigger and the prize. Is it a simple quiz question? A random draw? Or a longer term scavenger hunt-type experience? Once you’ve decided this, you just need to choose a compelling and relevant prize for people to win. 

Finally - the benefits. The biggest draw for competitions is first party data. We’ve found our competitions to be 3x cheaper CPA than paid ad channels as they hit consumers at the point of purchase and usage, whilst giving a more compelling reason to convert - resulting in far more form fills. They also give a good hook / moment in time to drive engagement towards new or limited time only campaigns - helping to drive quick results.

2. Gamification

Gamification experiences are a natural partner to competition-driven programmes. They can range considerably from classic mini-games offering consumers the chance to win prizes in a quick transactional manner, all the way to complex augmented reality experiences or medium to long term programmes.

A significant reason brands love to run these kinds of experiences is the impressive engagement times they produce as well as their ability to get across complex or important concepts in an entertaining way. So if you’re looking to educate your consumers on the importance of recycling your packaging or even the best ways of using your tech - mini games are a great way of engaging your consumers into learning this info.

3. Product Education

Speaking of product education, connected experiences are a great way of getting large amounts of instructions over to your consumers, in an engaging way. Where standard packaging or folded up instructions within your product’s box are limited by size and the format of words on paper - connected experiences open up a world of opportunities to get these instructions across and to encourage product usage and retention.

We’ve seen examples of brands using step-by-step click and learn type journeys, product quizzes, videos, and even hints from other consumers who use the product in an optimal way. All of these are much more likely to be both read and actually remembered by your consumers when it comes for them to use your product - reducing the chances of them getting frustrated and churning.

If you were to go industry-specific  - with FMCG products you can send people towards relevant recipes depending on their purchases, for alcohol it could be fun new cocktail ideas, and for clothing it could be full outfits that work well with what they bought. All of these are designed to keep the consumer coming back to your brand in the future and finding new ways to use your products.

4. Loyalty

Another way to improve customer retention is a loyalty specific connected experience. The best way we’ve seen brands achieve this is taking their consumers through a journey to get them closer to the brand - showing them the origins, purpose, and people that make a brand happen. This is particularly effective in industries where product differentiation is difficult.

The second significant way is through connecting your loyalty scheme to the experience. This allows your consumers to more simply register their purchases to the scheme, driving more engagement towards it. Plus it allows them to track their milestones to the next award. A significant issue with loyalty schemes in FMCG in particular is the effort of logging purchases often proves a barrier to consumers meaning they never take off. Integrating them into your connected experience however (often alongside a mix of some other suggestions here) makes it a seamless process that encourages engagement.

5. Gifting

The advantage of a serialised connected experience programme is that each individual product can lead to its own unique experience - and gifting experiences are the perfect use case for this. Rather than have your product just be the gift with all the sentiment going into the accompanying card - why not give the consumers the opportunity to record and collate personalised messages that can be viewed through AR simply by scanning the product?

Gifting experiences allow brands to add a layer of value to their product beyond the product itself, differentiating themselves from the competition, and adding a great hook especially around holiday periods. And for consumers, it allows them to get a gift that shows thought has gone into it.

6. Regulatory

Digital Product Passports (DPPs) are a big movement that are already changing the packaging industry, with increased requirements well on their way. This won’t just be a box ticking exercise either with studies showing sustainability and transparency will be a big buying factor with Gen Z in particular.

Connected experiences allow you to showcase all the information that interested consumers care about in an engaging and digestible way. This could be anything from a story of how your product goes from source, to manufacturing, retail, and eventually recycling - to a deep dive into your ingredients and the people that grow them. This is an excellent way to show you really care about these issues, rather than a link to a generic CSR disclaimer on your website.

7. Ingredients

Another aspect in this area that can be covered is ingredients, nutrition, and allergens. Whilst your packaging can cover some of the key basics of what is in your product, a digital journey can cover it in much more detail - allowing consumers to make a much more informed and healthy choice.

Great examples we’ve seen here are brands going into more depth about potential allergens contamination, what each nutritional aspect of the product really means (why it might be high in one and low in another and what that means), and breaking down what ingredients you might want to introduce more of into your diet due to their positive properties.

8. Authentication

A brilliant use case for NFC-driven experiences in particular is product authentication. The luxury industry is facing a surge in counterfeit fashion goods, costing the industry an estimated $3 trillion - driven by the rise of peer-to-peer e-commerce platforms like Depop and fast retail brands like Shein and Aliexpress.

NFCs are a great way to combat this - brands can add them to their items, with each tag having a unique product ID that can’t be copied, so when a customer scans it, they can confirm that the product is authentic, allowing them to feel confident in their purchase. By combining this with some of the other examples we’ve mentioned - you can create both an exclusive and engaging way of reducing counterfeits.

9. Support

The benefits of connected experiences don’t have to end in the marketing area of the business though - they can help customer service with their KPIs as well. By creating an experience that educates consumers on your product, and triages them to self-service customer support channels - you can help deflect them from the more costly call and email channels.

The triggers for connected experiences are often ideal for customer support - if they’re on packaging then you’re giving consumers an option at the point of both purchase and usage, which is when people most need help. So rather than people hitting your website, seeing an uninspiring FAQ page and instantly deciding to call your customer number - why not send them down an engaging digital journey that answers their questions along the way.

10. Promotions

Last but not least, one of the major benefits of QR codes and NFC tags we haven’t mentioned yet is that they are dynamic. So rather than a static URL printed on pack that can’t be updated, you can change where all your codes are linking to with the click of a button in a connected experience management platform. This makes them perfect for time-constrained promotions.

On packet promotions are often limited by the delay in printing new packaging and the time they take to come out of circulation - however a connected experience-driven promotion can be changed in minutes. This allows you to run short term promotions, with minimal notice, that are impactful for all your products in circulation rather than just recent ones. 

These are the 10 most popular types of connected experiences in our client base - but they aren’t the limit by a long way. Get in touch with us and we can talk to you about how our platform can help you create innovative experiences at scale - or start your free trial here.