By Aimee Chanthadavong

Borders has become one of the first major retailers in Australia to run a promotional campaign based around the location-sharing platform, Foursquare.

Foursquare, a mobile application, lets users to “check-in” to a place when they’re there, tell friends where they are and track the history of where they’ve been and who they’re with.

Border’s digital agency Tangent One developed the promotion that focuses on rewarding customers for checking-in. For every third check-in at a Borders store, customers will receive a 10 per cent discount off full-price books.

Malcolm Neil, group communications manager at REDgroup Retail, the company that owns Borders, told RetailBiz by rewarding customers for coming through the doors it will encourage more people to return to the store.

“Obviously, when you’re rewarding for multiple check-in more customers will tell their friends about it through Foursquare and telling them that it’s a popular place to be. And we’re happy to have more customers come in to Borders,” he said

“Earlier this year, Mumbrella mentioned that Foursquare has seen people check-in the same store and as that happens more and more users will come in more often.

“It’s rewarding customers for being social and Borders wants to be a company that is part of that social media network and be part of that conversation.”

According to Neil, unlike REDgroup Retail’s other book retail chain Angus & Robertson, customers who visit Borders meet the same characteristics of users of Foursquare.

“We’ve done a lot of work to find out who our customers are and Foursquare matches what a Border customer does. Foursquare works in a social aspect and can help people meet up and people who like to come to Borders like to come in, sit, meet people and buy coffee.”

But for customers who don’t own a smartphone, other special store promotions will still continue to be made available, Neil said.

“Using Foursquare was just a form of niche marketing that is really exciting for Borders to be part of that social media. But we still have other ways of rewarding our customers such as our shortlist program and we’ll be shortly introducing other reward programs.”

The Foursquare promotion will be rolled out to all of its 26 stores and will stay in the market for an initial two months with more offers and campaigns already planned.