Get ready for the holiday season! You can make a fun atmosphere with great prizes that your customers will love. Whether you want to make an Advent Calendar for December or start right now, you can create a special experience for your participants.
What are the benefits of creating an Advent Calendar?
- Improve brand positioning and awareness
- Introduce customers to new products and services
- Share company values
- Boost sales by offering incentives like discount codes and free shipping
Improve brand positioning and awareness
If you design advent calendar games thoughtfully, you will be able to familiarize users with your brand, products, and services while entertaining them at the same time.
Quiz-type games are an excellent place to do this. Intertwine common questions with those within your industry or those directly related to your company.
For example, if you are the first to introduce cryptocurrencies as a payment method in your area, that can be great material for one of the questions. Once potential customers discover that your company is a blockchain trailblazer, they will have even more positive associations with your brand.
Introduce customers to new products and services
Besides mentioning nuances and interesting facts about your brand and industry, your gamification campaign can be a great place to introduce your new products.
Something as simple as changing the game background to include your new products or brief explanations of your expanded services may be what it takes to spark interest. Even if potential customers don’t react immediately, they will be much more familiar with the product when they stumble upon it in one of your future social media posts.
Check out how Swedbank used advent calendars to engage their customers.
Boost sales
Even though advent calendars are primarily there to nurture relationships, if made the right way, they can even boost sales.
Some games you can include, such as the wheel of fortune, scratch cards, open the box, and even the advent calendar, are excellent places to share coupons and discount codes. Mix those with sporadic information about your new products, and don’t get surprised if customers jump back to your store straight from the advent calendar.
For more ideas on how to use gamification in sales, check out our article.
Share company values
Advent calendars will help you establish positive associations with your brand amongst clientele, showing how you care about family holidays and the festive spirit.
But, besides the usual brand elements, use advent calendars to share company values. For example, if you took part in a fundraising basketball tournament or a similar cause, mention that.
Holidays are times of sharing, and showing that your company cares about those in need will show that you are unlike Scrooge but more like Santa!
Advent calendar ideas for the business holiday season
Many business budgets depend mainly on Christmas sales. The good news is that you don’t have to wait until Christmas to make sales.
Below, we have gathered five advent calendar ideas for your business that will help spread the holiday spirit throughout the whole year.
1. Christmas advent calendar
As Christmas approaches, get into the festive spirit with your very own advent calendar! Fill it with fun advent calendar games, prizes, and discounts to help spread some Christmas cheer. Drive traffic to your site and remind people daily that Christmas is just around the corner – it’s the perfect time to buy presents for loved ones!
An advent calendar is a great way to keep your customers’ attention every day leading up to Christmas. By offering promotions and discounts, you can create excitement and encourage sales. Plus, everyone loves playing fun games – and sharing the experience with their friends too!
This is what your Christmas Advent Calendar could look like:
2. Christmas tree advent calendar
The holidays are a special time of year when family and friends come together to celebrate. One of the most important traditions is putting up a Christmas tree. Hanging numbered boxes or ball ornaments from a Christmas tree – an actual tree or a wooden one – is another traditional format of the Advent Calendar. This year, try something new and use a tree-shaped design for your online advent calendar campaign.
Because, if you want to add some of the emotions and thrill of gathering around a tree to open gifts, what could be better than a Christmas tree theme?
3. New Year’s eve advent calendar
Why stop the countdown at Christmas when your brand can be word-of-mouth for an entire month?
Surprise your audience with New Year’s eve gifts, games, and promos on a daily basis. They will visit your site long after Christmas – and even if their pockets are not as full this time of the year, you will keep them coming every year at least just to play!
Some ideas to keep the fun up until the New Year:
- Boxing Day Flash Sale: The day after Christmas, December 26th is Boxing Day. While it started as a day to donate to the poor, it is nowadays a shopping holiday – ideal for a flash sale!
- New Years´ Eve Plinko Ball: Over a million people gather at Times Square to see the New Years’ ball drop – there must be something magical going on. What if you could bring some of the excitement to December 31st with a Plinko game? Players will have to drop the ball and depending on where it falls they will get a discount or prize.
First Day of the Year giveaway: Surprise your audience with a New Years’ gift! A unique promo code, discount, or small prize can do the trick. And, if you want to add some excitement to the experience, make your customers open the interactive box to find the gift hidden in it.
4. Halloween advent calendar
October 31st is Halloween, a US-cherished holiday that is now celebrated almost everywhere. Anticipate the thrill with a two-week spooky calendar!
Halloween fans are going to enjoy this themed anticipation calendar so much! Fill your calendar with spooky games and themed deals and have people coming to your site to discover the daily surprises.
It is a good idea to set a fun mood by creating a cohesive experience with a landing page, matching email designs, and social media posts. It is all about the experience!
If you get it right, your audience will enjoy hours of fun with your business in mind.
5. Thanksgiving advent calendar
Between Christmas and Halloween comes silent Thanksgiving. Not all businesses build campaigns for this quiet Holiday but it is a huge opportunity to keep your audience engaged all year long!
Also, don´t forget to include Black Friday in your Thanksgiving advent calendar! Right after Thanksgiving (around the end of November) this holiday is one of the busiest shopping days in the retail calendar – probably because it is never too early to start shopping for Christmas.
Need some inspiration? In the following section, you will see how to create a digital advent calendar and, if you keep going, you will find a day-by-day advent calendar example for the days leading to Christmas.
To learn more how to create your own Advent Calender, check out our knowledge base article.
