No More Waiting for Their First Message: Start the Conversation with PingTag’s New Scan-Reply Feature!

This article originally appeared on PingTag’s blog. You can read the full version here.

A while back, PingTag introduced a feature that quickly became everyone’s favorite: the option to receive email and SMS location alerts as soon as someone scans your lost tag.

That feature helped Liam recover his $500 Gucci sunglasses when they fell into the Truckee River during a white water rafting trip. He had a PingTag QR code sticker on their band, and when he received a scan alert from Los Angeles a week later, he didn’t believe it at first. But then he went into his PingTag dashboard and added a public note to that QR code describing where, when, and how he lost his sunglasses so that the finder would see it next time he or she scans the QR code.

Sure enough, the next time Chris, a law enforcement officer who found Liam’s glasses during a river-cleaning weekend dive, scanned their QR code, he saw Liam’s note on the page. Chris messaged Liam privately through PingTag’s platform, and they arranged to have the sunglasses shipped back to Liam.

If you haven’t read the full story yet, you can read it here.

The challenge

This story illustrates how human integrity and honesty, combined with a secure platform that allows people to communicate privately and anonymously, increases the chances of recovering lost items.

However, it also highlights one of the biggest challenges of lost and found tags: Waiting for the finder to initiate contact.

Although you receive a scan alert when someone finds your lost tag, you have to wait for them to send the first message. This waiting period can be stressful, as you anxiously wonder when you will receive that message.

Making the first move

But what if you didn’t have to wait?

With PingTag’s new scan reply feature, you no longer have to!

You can now send the first message. 😊

As soon as you receive a location scan alert from your lost tag, you can reply to that alert via SMS to initiate a chat with the finder. Your message will show up within a second or two in the “New Messages” section, right above the chat button on your QR code’s page, as shown below:

Initiating communication with the finder means you can instantly thank them and guide them on how they can return the item to you.

It also increases your chances of having it back, since it reassures the finder and motivate them to help.

And finally, it means not having to risk wasting valuable time logging to your PingTag dashboard to change the note on your landing page, as you will be notified of the scan alert via SMS and can respond directly from there.

How to activate scan replies for your PingTags

If you already have the scan alerts option selected for your tags, the new feature is automatically enabled, and you can reply to any scan alert via SMS to initiate conversation with anyone who scans them.

If you don’t have scan alerts enabled, log in to your dashboard, select the PingTag you would like to activate it for, click “edit,” and then enable the scan alert feature.

Scan alerts and replies are available for PingTag Premium and Pro.

Premium is a one-time upgrade for life that adds extra peace of mind to all your tags with amazing features like private and anonymous communication via SMS, the ability to assign multiple contacts, adding photos and notes to your QR code’s landing page, attaching documents and records, receiving instant location scan alerts, and initiating chat via SMS.

Pro is also a one-time upgrade for life that includes everything in Premium and adds unlimited private and public attachments, video uploads, and more contacts to all your QR codes.

Faster find, faster peace of mind

At PingTag, our mission is to leverage human integrity, honesty, and goodwill to ensure that you are contacted in case of an emergency or if you lose a pet or valuable item.

With our new SMS Scan Reply feature, the process of finding lost items is faster, more effective, and less stressful. You no longer need to wait for the first message; instead, you can now start the conversation as soon as your tag is found and scanned!

Try PingTag for free here. You can print your own QR labels at home, or order ready made ones from our store.

May everything and everyone you love find their way back to you 😊