Visit Indiana shows off their fall colors and a unique foursquare special with a little help from Right On Interactive

Every year, Visit Indiana sets up leaf cams throughout the state so you’ll know when it’s the perfect time to visit and see the fall leaves in all their glory. This year, they’ve added a unique foursquare promotion to the mix. If you follow Visit Indiana and check in at any venue near one of their leaf cams, you’ll receive an exclusive special offer via email. The promotion runs through November 13.

Typically, foursquare specials are tied to a specific venue, but checking in to a leaf cam itself isn’t really possible. Visit Indiana wanted to reward users who visit the general leaf cam area, so they partnered with Right On Interactive (ROI) to create a tool that was up to the task. ROI was able to add foursquare API integration to their existing Customer Lifecycle Management dashboard.

“After seeing Explore Chicago and Visit PA offer custom badges for visitors, we wanted to try something different, that’s where the idea to utilize Right On Interactive’s (ROI) Customer Lifecycle Marketing Dashboard came into play,” said Jeremy Williams, Interactive Production Manager for the Indiana Office of Tourism Development. “We would be able to truly reward our followers for traveling in Indiana by emailing them exclusive discounts when they checked in. Rather than making the discounts available to everyone on Foursquare, we really wanted to encourage users to interact with us and use our tips to plan their next Indiana vacation.”

ROI’s CLM system is able to automatically send emails based on a number of triggers from different social networks. With foursquare integration, they’re able to send an email to any follower of Visit Indiana (who shares their email address with friends in their foursquare settings) when they check in within a given radius of one of the leaf cams.

In addition, ROI’s CLM system can automatically send a welcome email when someone follows Visit Indiana. Their lead scoring feature also works with foursquare checkins, with points accumulated for certain checkins or activity on other social networks. Additional communications can be triggered based on the number of points earned.

Visit Indiana previously had success with a foursquare special tied to their booth at the Indiana State Fair. “We launched our State Fair/Foursquare promotion with only around 300 followers and by the end of the fair, we had doubled our number of followers,” said Williams.

Here are the 2010 Leaf Cam locations along with their foursquare venues:

• Brown County State Park (foursquare venue)
• Indianapolis Museum of Art’s 100 Acres Exhibit (foursquare venue)
• Spring Mill State Park (foursquare venue)

Visit Indiana’s special is a unique way to use foursquare for checkins in a certain area rather than at a certain venue. ROI’s foursquare integration certainly has a lot of potential uses beyond the Leaf Cams and could be valuable to lots of brands setting up their foursquare presence.

What do you think of Visit Indiana’s unique foursquare promotion? What uses can you think of for ROI’s CLM dashboard?