How Visit PA Turned Strategic Partnerships into 56,000+ Creamery Visits and 16,000+ Newsletter Sign-Ups

Background

Pennsylvania’s Scooped Ice Cream Trail has been around since 2018, but the program moved from a paper to digital experience in 2022. The seasonal trail launches at the beginning of June each year, coinciding with National Dairy Month, and ends around Labor Day. Even with the pass's seasonal lifespan, it has averaged over 9,700 passholders annually since it went live on Bandwango’s digital platform.  

‍

Creating the Perfect Partnership 

Visit PA teamed up with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture and the Center for Dairy Excellence to create a truly collaborative, statewide pass experience. The program’s mission is to support Pennsylvania’s local dairy and agricultural economy by connecting creameries within a region, encouraging customers to travel among venues, and ultimately boosting business across all participating PA Preferred locations. 

The three partners work well together, each contributing responsibilities that are essential to the success of the Scooped Ice Cream Trail. Ellie Anderson, Visit PA’s Deputy Digital Director, builds the pass in Bandwango’s Experience Builder, and a wider multidisciplinary team manages the marketing and promotion of the trail. She noted that their partners also play key roles in making the trail run smoothly.

“The PA Department of Agriculture and the Center for Dairy Excellence handle the outreach to creameries. They select the creameries that will be on the pass and verify all of them are participating in the PA Preferred program, which means their products or ingredients are created/sourced in-state and are true Pennsylvania-made products. They also collect the images and descriptions of the creameries that people see on the pass and website.”

While dividing tasks among multiple stakeholders is certainly a perk, Anne Ryan, Deputy Secretary of Tourism for Visit PA, has noted that the partnership has benefited them in even more ways: 

• “While inter-department collaborations may not always appear as a top-line focus area for tourism offices, this program has allowed us to hone in on one common goal: supporting locally-owned businesses and using agritourism to bring foot traffic through their doors.” 

• “The partnership has allowed the tourism office to highlight impactful statistics to connect agriculture, one of PA’s largest industries, to a visitor-facing message. We’re able to spotlight not only locally-made ice cream, but also the farms and creameries that make this product possible.” 

• “The partnership across departments also makes for a more robust pitch for earned media, allowing us to tap into deeper stories of PA business owners and their legacy farming efforts, versus a focus on just the ice cream as an end product.”

‍

Another Unexpected Perk: More Newsletter Subscribers

While Pennsylvania’s Scooped Ice Cream Trail is fulfilling its mission, there is an unexpected bonus that comes with the digital pass. The program has become an effective way to grow Visit PA's newsletter subscriber list and encourage deeper engagement with the PA tourism brand year-round. 

Anderson said she pulls the list of opt-ins from her Bandwango reporting dashboard every month. “Once I pull the report of the passholders that have opted in to those external communications, the contacts receive a new subscriber drip campaign message to introduce Visit PA communications for wider engagement.” When asked if the opt-in report is meaningful to her organization, she replied,

“It is super impactful. Getting those opt-ins is huge because it's another opportunity to expand our reach and distribution list, highlight everything happening across the state, and encourage more travel to PA.”

‍

Marketing the Pennsylvania Scooped Ice Cream Trail

The trail remains a popular initiative that ice cream lovers eagerly anticipate each summer. "People start asking about the ice cream trail very early,” Anderson shared. With excitement building months ahead of launch, the Visit PA team has found a way to harness that momentum through pre-signups. About four weeks before launch, they add a form to their website allowing people to sign up in advance. 

Once the pass goes live, those early sign-ups receive their passes immediately. “The pre-signups have definitely helped,” she said. “We’ve done pre-signups the past two years, and that’s been a great success.”

Ryan adds, “While this group is typically representative of repeat users of the pass, these are still valuable to the overall goal of driving foot traffic and visitor spending to the venues.”

The early marketing for the pass through pre-signups is one of Visit PA’s keys to success, but other marketing efforts include:   

• Organic social media 
• Email marketing, both dedicated directly to pass holders and mentions through other Visit PA distributions
• Annual launch press conference supported by Visit PA (within the PA Dept. of Community & Economic Development), the PA Dept. of Agriculture, and the Center for Dairy Excellence
• Earned media pitching and media interviews
• Content creator partnerships 

In addition to their own marketing, Visit PA develops collateral materials and a marketing toolkit to ensure that all participants are equipped with information to promote the program on-site. This typically includes window clings, table tents, and pre-drafted social media content. Because many of these businesses are small, family-owned operations, having ready-to-use materials benefits everyone and ensures consistent branding and messaging across the program. 

‍

Measurements of Success

While success for Bandwango passes can be measured in various ways, there are certain criteria Visit PA monitors to ensure the passport program meets its goals. Some of their measurements for success include: 

• Total number of check-ins and total number of visits to creameries 
• Diverse spread of venue check-ins across tourism regions
• Boosted retail sales for participating locations on the trail
• Increased awareness of the PA Preferred program
• Earned media coverage of the program
• Email newsletter opt-ins 
• Website traffic & engagement

‍

Results

The program’s main goal is to increase awareness of and drive more visitors to farms that operate on-site creameries with retail sales under the state’s PA Preferred program. According to the numbers, it’s working. 

• Since making the move to Bandwango in 2022, there’s been more than 57,000 documented visits to local creameries 
• They’ve also received more than 16k newsletter opt-ins 

And, it’s been good for local businesses. Participating locations see an uptick in customers during the program’s run, which is strategically tied to summer travel months. Visit PA sees very little year-over-year drop-off in participating locations, with overall annual growth in the total number of participating venues. 

While the Scooped Ice Cream Trail has welcomed participants from 48 states and four countries, a strong majority of users are from within Pennsylvania.

“We have a high number of repeat users of this program year to year, and a high number of in-state users. This indicates strong customer loyalty and repeat visitation to the small businesses across the state,” said Ryan.

‍

Visit Pennsylvania’s Tips for Success

• Consider changing up the prizes every year. 

“We want to entice people to come back and continue their support of small businesses across the Commonwealth,” said Anderson. They’ve chosen a very targeted prize for this year – a trail-branded insulated bag that’s perfect for toting around ice cream. The state also has a grand prize: passholders who visit at least 10 creameries are entered into the drawing for a chance to win an overnight getaway. 

“In 2025, we implemented a tiered ‘grand prize’ entry that allowed us to increase engagement with the pass itself, while also working in tandem with a regional DMO to build out an overnight trip prize package. We received 128 entries for this prize in 2025, translating to over 1,000 creamery visits.” 

‍

• Create an FAQ section on your landing page. 

Pennsylvania’s Scooped Ice Cream Trail has been around for many years, and during that time, they’ve heard it all. There are common questions that passholders keep asking, so they’ve created a section on the pass's landing page to address them. That helps their team field fewer questions, but Anderson says the FAQ also serves another purpose. 

“It’s beneficial from the user experience standpoint. It not only helps individuals that continue to come to us with questions, but it also can help us in the age of AI and LLMs – FAQs are very important for these tools to scrape the correct information.”

‍

• Pull reports and analyze data on an ongoing basis. 

“We review reporting monthly. It gives us a sense of how things are doing and lets us know if we should pivot our efforts mid-program, or see if there's anything extra we should be doing to promote it,” said Anderson. 

For example, adding additional in-platform messaging, pushing more organic social, or sending a dedicated message to the newsletter list. 

‍

• Stay up-to-date on Bandwango’s newest features. 

Visit PA likes to stay aware of the evolving array of new features. Anderson shared, “After the trail is over, we always set up a call with the Bandwango team to review our program’s performance and discuss anything new that we should consider optimizing in the future.”

‍

Conclusion 

Anderson shared her words of advice with other DMOs. “If your destination has a specific idea that you think could be enhanced into a more dynamic visitor experience, I would definitely recommend Bandwango. I know a lot of our local DMOs use Bandwango for their own regional trail experiences too. The repeat users who sign up and travel along the Scooped Ice Cream Trail indicate to us that the program's user experience is positive and easy to navigate.”

Visit PA has done an excellent job collaborating with other organizations to achieve a shared goal. By distributing responsibilities, creating engaging marketing campaigns, and maximizing the platform's capabilities, they've created a blueprint that other state DMOs can follow. In addition, they are using the program to build their newsletter subscriber database. That allows them to share information on all Pennsylvania has to offer – not just its great ice cream. If you’re a destination marketing organization that’s looking to achieve similar results, reach out to our team to set up a free demo of Bandwango’s Experience Builder.