In short
Brand-to-consumer Fusion turns a single scan into a channel you can still reach months later — with a person who has given you no email address, no phone number and no name. The relationship is the asset, not the contact record.
The constraint that defines it: the person always makes the first move, and you can never make it for them. Everything about how this performs follows from designing for a pull rather than a push.
On this page
- What changes when a scan becomes a relationship
- The shape of the thing you are building
- What you get, and what you never get
- Choosing your admission floor
- The three ways people enroll
- Answering: the console and your staff
- What to put on the other end before you print anything
- Symptoms, causes and fixes
- Things people commonly get wrong
What changes when a scan becomes a relationship
An ordinary Linxy Mark gives you an interaction: somebody scanned, from roughly there, at roughly that time, on that kind of device. Useful, anonymous, and over. If you want to say something to that person tomorrow you have no way to do it.
A Connection changes the direction of the arrow. Once a person has enrolled through your touchpoint, there is a durable channel between you and them that you can both use. You can answer a question, send them the thing they asked for, tell them the recall applies to their batch, or offer them something. They can come back without hunting for the original object.
What makes this different from collecting an email address is that the person keeps control of their identity while you keep the ability to reach them. You are not holding a contact record you now have to defend. You are holding a channel that only works while they want it to.
The shape of the thing you are building
What you get, and what you never get
| You get | You never get |
|---|---|
| A persistent channel per person, that you can message in | The ability to open a channel with somebody. They initiate, always |
| Their display name, and any field they choose to share | Any field they have not shared. There is no fallback, and no bulk export of people who declined |
| Which touchpoint they came through, and how — scan, tap, code or link | Anything about their other Connections. Nothing links your relationship to any other |
| A record your staff can read, search and hand between them | A mailing list. What you have is a set of channels people can close |
| The knowledge that a verified, accountable human is on the other end | Their identity, unless they decided you should have it |
Most brands start out wanting the right-hand column and end up preferring the left. A channel of two hundred people who chose to open one is worth more than a list of two thousand addresses harvested at a checkout, and it does not need defending in the same way.
Choosing your admission floor
The floor is how sure you need to be that a real, accountable person is present before you will hold a channel. It is separate from what you ask them to disclose. Raising it makes the channel more trustworthy and enrollment slightly harder; the right answer depends entirely on what the channel does.
| Floor | Use it when | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Anyone (device only) | The channel carries public information — product content, instructions, marketing | You cannot tell a person from a device, and nothing can be recovered onto a new phone |
| Signed-in app users | You want a durable conversation with saved history | Requires the Linxy App. Almost no friction beyond that |
| Verified (Fusion) | Ownership, warranty, support that touches an account — anything worth impersonating | A biometric confirmation at enrollment. The sensible default for anything that matters |
| Verified + shared ID details | Claims, regulated services, anything that must be matched to a named individual | Name and email become mandatory and are locked on at consent. Some people will decline, and should |
You also choose what happens when somebody does not meet the floor. Soft gives them a limited channel and invites them to step up later — almost always the right choice, because it keeps the conversation alive. Hard refuses the channel outright, which is appropriate when a partial relationship would be misleading or unlawful.
The three ways people enroll
| Path | How it works | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Scanning a Linxy Mark | They point the App at an image you have marked and configured for enrollment | Anything physical. It also proves a real object was in front of them, which no link can do |
| Entering your code | They type your organization's short code into the App | Radio, video, spoken introductions, small print, anywhere scanning is awkward |
| Opening a link you sent | You send a link by email or message; tapping it opens the App and begins enrollment | Following up with people you can already reach, and moving an existing relationship onto the platform |
All three produce the same relationship with the same protections. The channel records which one was used, which is worth watching: if your printed pieces produce nothing and your code produces everything, the problem is the placement of the marked image, not the offer.
Answering: the console and your staff
Connections appear in the messaging console for the Mark they belong to. Several people can work it, a conversation can be handed to a colleague with its history intact, and the record persists so the next person to pick it up is not starting cold. This is the legitimate reason a brand channel is readable by more than one individual, and it is exactly what a person expects when they write to a company.
Two consequences worth stating to your team in plain words. First, the person on the other end has been told that your staff can read this channel — so nothing here is a private confidence, and it should not be treated as one. Second, the channel is the person's, not yours: they can close it, and the only thing that keeps it open is being worth answering.
What to put on the other end before you print anything
- A display name people will recognize. The legal entity name is often not it. Use the name on the packaging.
- A logo. It appears on the consent screen, at the moment somebody decides whether to trust you.
- A welcome message. It arrives the instant the channel opens and it is the only message you are guaranteed to be read. Say what this channel is for and what they can ask.
- An honest disclosure request. Ask for what the service needs and nothing more. Every extra field is a reason to abandon the screen.
- Somebody watching. See above.
- A test enrollment on a real printed sample. Scan the actual artifact, on an ordinary phone, in the light it will be seen in.
Symptoms, causes and fixes
| Symptom | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Scans are recorded but nobody enrolls | The Mark delivers content but is not configured for enrollment | Configure the Mark for connection. A scan and an enrollment are different things |
| Enrollments start and are abandoned | Usually the consent screen — too many fields, or a hard floor that surprises people | Ask for less. Move a hard floor to soft unless the law requires otherwise |
| Connections show no name or contact details | Those people shared nothing, which is the default | Working as designed. Ask in the channel if you need something, and say why |
| You cannot message somebody who scanned | They interacted but never enrolled, so there is no channel | No workaround exists. This direction is closed by design |
| A conversation seems to have been answered twice | Two staff members picked it up | Use handoff rather than parallel replies; decide who owns the queue |
| Anonymous participants you cannot act on | The floor is set to device-only | Raise the floor to Verified for anything that needs a person behind it |
| Someone's channel went quiet and you cannot reopen it | They removed the Connection | Nothing to fix. They would need to enroll again, from their side |
Things people commonly get wrong
Related reading: Types of Connection, Consent, and what each side can see, Private channels and message privacy, Managing Connections in the console, and What Fusion actually means.