Contactless payment methods like Apple Pay and Android Pay saw excellent growth in 2020 when folks were looking to pay at the gas station without having to touch the same POS screen that everyone else has. Many Americans cleared the shelves of Nintendio’s Switch console and Animal Crossing, which provided some much needed escapism. Some even purchased Amiibos, a line of figurines that unlock additional features and content when you bring your Switch and the toy into close proximity. Both contactless payments and Amiibos utilize NFC or Near Field Communication technology.

Nintendo Amiibos use NFC to trigger exclusive content in their video games.

When an NFC chip is brought into close proximity to a scanning device, like your phone, small bits of data are transferred from one to the other. In the case of Amiibos, the chips in your credit card, or the one in my hand, there is no requirement for outside electricity or battery. The scanning process itself generates enough electricity for the transfer to take place. So what data is transferred? In the case of my NFC implant, simply a URL to a webpage. The experience is very similar to scanning a QR code with your camera but with the benefit of not demanding valuable imprint space.

The number of use cases for NFC are vast. But in this post I want to focus on how this technology can be used to enhance promotional product campaigns. Let’s go!

What can NFC do for promotional products?

In a business where we all sell from the same supply chain, it’s important to add value to your buyer’s experience. We do this by offering things like our expertise and friction free purchasing. NFC, however, has the potential to add significant value to the promotional products themselves in two primary ways.

Digital Experience

Digital experiences provide a model by which brands can proliferate their message in a manner that can scale to an enormous number of eyeballs quickly. It’s this “viral” quality that makes it so attractive to marketers. A digital brand experience could be (in order of ambition):

A micro-website for a new product
A sweepstakes that requires you to engage with a brand’s social media
A silly video narrated by Ryan Reynolds
A movie poster that, when scanned with a mobile device, provides a custom AR experience
A dating simulator video game that completely reimagines the founder of your fried chicken chain as a dreamy college co-ed (this is real)

Promotional products, on the other hand, are unique in that they are physical manifestations of a brand that the recipient can hold in their hands. NFC provides the opportunity to bridge the gap between physical and digital (hat tip to Danny Rosin) by providing recipients of promotional products a unique way to interact with their products.

NFC upgraded promo products can be used to:

Facilitate a sweepstakes by marking a random product as the “golden ticket” for a larger prize
Encourage repeat scans of the product to gain access to new or exclusive content
Connect the recipient to a chat bot
Provide the recipient with a coupon for their next purchase
Save contact info to an address book
Take the recipient to a landing page with more information

After a virtual event, we had leftover swag kits. So we slapped an NFC sticker on them that directs the scanner to the recording of the event and shipped them out to those who couldn’t make the live event.

Measurable Results

For years friends I have discussed how to build this physical/digital bridge and one of the primary reasons for doing this is data. Until recently, the best we could do is provide our buyers with industry research that makes its best researched guess at the number of brand impressions, cost per impression and the longevity of promotional products. But showing the buyer measurable ROI on their investment in our products has been elusive.

This is what digital brand experiences do so well. Throw up an ad or social media post, measure engagement, evaluate your cost per impression and even your cost per conversion. Who engaged? What part of the country are they in? What did they do once they landed on your website? This data is gold.

With smart, NFC enabled promo products, you can offer your buyer the same kinds of analytics for their promotional product campaign. You’re no longer selling a commodity product. The race to bottom price is canceled. You’re selling a complete marketing solution now.

PRO-TIP: Don’t let the idea of providing your buyer with analytics scare you. If your customer is using Google Analytics or similar, when you are determining the URL that the tag should direct to, suggest they set up a UTM code. This will allow them to track how many people got to their site through the product. Read more about UTM codes here but know that savvy marketers will know what you’re talking about.

The state of NFC in our industry.

Adoption of NFC in the United States, specifically for contactless payments, has been slow for years. COVID, however, got people interested in giving the tech a try as we made efforts to avoid spread. Over the past year, Apple has seen a 59% increase in usage of its payment service. The promotional products industry infamously lags behind consumer trends, so you would think that we were years away from NFC enabled products. I’m happy to report that NFC products already exist in the industry.

Industry supplier Spector and Co. (not a sponsor) planted their flag as an early adopter of NFC enhanced products well over a year ago. Their line of enhanced products includes everything from pens to backpacks.

Authentic Or Not (also not a sponsor) is another company making its way into the promotional products industry. Their solution is unique as, not only do they provide the NFC tags but their campaign management platform allows you to build robust campaigns that facilitate drip campaigns, giveaways, and more. If you’re an industry supplier who is interested in offering NFC enabled products, I recommend you reach out to them (tell them I sent you).

Conclusion

Any opportunity that allows me to add value to the products we sell gets me excited. As illustrated above, NFC has loads of potential for us and, in North America, I feel we are primed for healthy awareness and adoption of the technology. In a world where the physical connections to the things (and brands) we love are no longer taken for granted, promotional products have found refreshing relevance.

I’ll say it – NFC is the next big thing.