The last quarter of every year is jam-packed full of holidays: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year - and let’s not forget those “marketing holidays” Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
In 2019, US households spent an average of $1,536 in Christmas holiday sales, which amounts to a total of more than a trillion dollars - yep, that’s a mind-blowing twelve zeros. More than 70% of shoppers are planning to spend the same amount in 2020, with 60% preferring to buy holiday gifts online.
The numbers speak for themselves: The Christmas spirit puts people into a giving mood. They shop for loved ones, friends, and colleagues, and tend to open their pockets a little more, dig a little deeper, than they would throughout the rest of the year.
They’re also more open than ever to signing up for contests and sweepstakes. Whether they’re hoping to save a little money on gifts for their loved ones or maybe wanting to win a little something for themselves, now’s the time to boost your marketing efforts by offering an awesome giveaway to your customers.
In the spirit of the giving season, we’ve compiled a list of great holiday-themed giveaway types for you to capture new email leads and delight your audience - as well as your own bottom line.
Do You Need a Specific Holiday Product or Service?
Let’s get this question out of the way first: No, you don’t.
If you’re selling pedometers, for example, you don’t have to switch their design to red, white, or green to match Santa’s outfit. You could, however, put a New Year’s spin on your marketing, as in “Win our pedometer to keep track of your 10.000-steps-a-day resolution in the New Year”.
Basically, you can offer your usual wares with a holiday twist - like a Halloween-, Thanksgiving-, or Christmas-themed giveaway.
6 Holiday-Themed Giveaways and Contests to Help You Grow Your Email List
There are many different types of holiday contests you can run, but they all have one goal: capture the interest (and email addresses) of future potential buyers. In short, to grow your leads.
This means that you give contestants the chance to win prizes for taking a specific action to be captured as leads, or, in the advanced version, if they rake in more leads (i.e. email addresses) for you. This could for example be when they:
- Sign up to win a grand prize giveaway, discount coupon, voucher, or other unique code themselves
- Share the giveaway online
- Refer the giveaway to people
Here at KickoffLabs, we have a variety of features and campaign types that can help you set up exactly such types of giveaways:
- We have a Coupon Giveaway feature, which generates leads by giving away coupons, vouchers, and other unique codes to your fans through our email replies.
- Then there are the Bonus Entry Giveaway, with which leads earn additional entries and increase their odds of winning by following your brand or referring friends.
- And with our Leaderboard Giveaways, your leads can earn points and move up the leaderboard by referring friends, following your brand, or taking other social actions.
Let’s have a look at some of the holiday giveaways consumers tend to love and that can easily go viral for you.
1. Advent Calendar
Like almost anything these days, advent calendars have long gone beyond the physical, filled-with-chocolate model. Why not create an online giveaway for a string of lucky daily winners from December 1st to the “grand prize” on the 24th? Our Coupon Giveaways, for example, could be set up so that one lucky contestant can win a 70% discount code a day.
Depending on your budget, you could also choose multiple winners per day. But there is a caveat: setting up an advent calendar like this, with 24 or more different prizes and winners, is hard work.
But! The chances of getting picked up by websites like Competition Database or Money Saving Expert is high for such a big giveaway - which can lead to thousands of entrants! In which case it would be well worth the effort.
Another way to do it could be to launch a new giveaway each day, but let them each run for a month, which will bring in extra closing date traffic for each one.
2. Charity Contests
The season of giving is automatically also the season of charity, when people open their wallets to more than just their loved ones. Your audience will surely love the opportunity to both win a treat for themselves while simultaneously donating to someone else.
For example, for every $100 prize a contestant can win, you could offer to donate the same amount to a charity of either your choice, or you could even give the winner a few different charities to choose from.
3. Caption Contest
Having trouble coming up with great captions for your campaign or marketing materials? Let your followers create it for you. People love to be creative, especially when there’s a chance of public recognition, like when their caption is picked - and even more so when there’s an extra prize attached to winning.
The great thing about caption contests is that you’re simultaneously keeping your audience fully engaged with your brand. Why not kick things up a notch by letting the contestants or the rest of your followers vote on which caption they like best?
Sure, that’s taking things to the “advanced levels” of a caption contest. To keep it simple, you can post an intriguing photo on your social media pages or website, and ask followers to enter their caption ideas in a sign-up page, which automatically enters them in the giveaway to win a grand prize.
4. “Make a Christmas Wish List” Competition
Tell your audience to create their own wish list of your products or services and input that list in a sign-up page. Then draw a random winner who gets the items on their wishlist for free. Super simple, but almost guaranteed to amass a ton of leads.
Added bonus: You’ll find out which of your products are especially in demand this holiday season, maybe even before people seriously start Christmas shopping.
5. New Year’s Resolution
Sticking to our New Year’s resolutions is always easier when we’re not going it alone. Whether we team up with our partner, act as accountability buddies with friends, or get a whole group together to run, calorie-count, or productivity-boost our way beyond those first pumped few weeks of the new year, we tend to hang in there far longer when we’re in it together.
Make use of that very basic quirk of human nature: Get your audience to share your giveaway with their family, friends, and followers who have similar New Year’s resolutions.
Remember our earlier example of the pedometer? If that were your product, you could offer contestants the opportunity to win not one but two (or even three or more) of your product - but only if they share the contest and get at least two more people to sign up for it. Whoever wins, gets to gift the extra pedometers to their friends - and they can ring in the New Year together, with higher group incentive to stick to their resolution of exercising more.
You can easily set up this type of giveaway with our Bonus Entry Giveaway.
6. “Refer a Friend” Contest
Along the same lines (but simpler) is the more straightforward refer-a-friend giveaway, for which you - surprise, surprise! - ask your audience to refer a friend. Give increasingly more attractive deals to people who spread the word farther and wider. For example, people who refer five friends might get a 50% discount, while people who refer ten friends could receive 70%.
To do this, all you have to do is offer shareable links on your website. They make it super easy for your followers to refer friends via email or text - also something our Bonus Entry Giveaway can do for you.
Start Your Holiday Giveaway Now
As you can see, there are many different ways to run giveaways that will grow your email list - and the more you get your audience involved, the better. Don’t be afraid to get creative and make it fun.
The holidays are just around the corner, so best get started now. We’d love to help you make your holiday-themed giveaway a roaring success. We’ve helped customers just like you collect over 33 million new leads with fun and creative giveaways. Let’s create some holiday spirit together. Sign up here for a free trial with KickoffLabs.