Email QR codes: ready-written messages in QR by Zaweba

An email code is a small piece of organisation disguised as convenience. With the Email kind in QR by Zaweba you enter an address, a subject and a message, and anyone who scans the code gets a new email on their phone with all three already filled in. They only have to press send, and you get a message whose subject line you chose.

That second part is what makes it useful for a business, a club or a school office.

How the Email kind builds the code

Behind the boxes, the app writes a mailto: link, the standard way to describe a new email with its address, subject and body. Writing one by hand is fiddly, because spaces, line breaks and punctuation in the subject and message have to be encoded, or the link breaks part way through. QR by Zaweba does that encoding for you, so you type ordinary words and the code still works.

When a phone scans it, the phone's mail app opens with the message ready. The person sending it can still change anything before they send.

Jobs it suits

Think of the Email kind wherever you want people to write to you about one thing. A flyer for a jumble sale with the subject "Stall booking". A poster in a shop window with "Enquiry about repairs". A feedback card on a café table with "Feedback" and a short opening line. A form handed out at an event where the code starts an email to register interest.

Because the subject is set by you, these emails are easy to sort when they arrive. A mail rule or a search on that subject gathers them together, and you can tell at a glance which poster or flyer brought them in. Use a different subject on each piece of printed material if you want to know which one works.

Writing the subject and message

Keep the subject short and specific, the way you would want it in your inbox. Use the message box for a prompt rather than an essay: a line such as "Hello, I'd like to book a table for" invites the person to finish the sentence. Everything you put in goes into the code, and the more text it holds, the denser the code becomes, so a long message makes it harder to scan from a distance.

Double check the address. The live preview reads the code back on every change and says whether it reads back exactly, but it can't know whether the address is spelled right. Send yourself a test by scanning it with your own phone.

Fitting it with the rest of the app

The Email kind sits alongside the other seven kinds, and it is worth comparing. If people would rather talk, the Phone call kind dials a number. If you'd rather receive a text, the Text message kind opens a ready-written SMS. If you simply want them on your website's contact page, the Web address kind does that.

Once the content is in, the same options apply as for any code: size in millimetres, the margin, error correction, colours, a transparent background or a logo in the middle. Save as PNG, SVG or PDF, or use Copy picture to paste it into the flyer you are already writing.

Things that trip people up

Avoid using a personal address that you would not want printed in public; the address is in the code and anyone can read it. Avoid subjects so vague they can't be filtered later. And remember that the email only opens if the phone has a mail app set up, so it is kind to print the address in words near the code too.

Test once, print, and the enquiries arrive labelled.