The holidays are a great time for sharing quality time, giving, and general excitement all around. That makes it the perfect recipe for lead generation and boosting engagement! Here are some ideas to launch your next simple holiday giveaway in no time, plus templates you can use.
Quickly Create Your ThanksGiving Contest
It is easier than ever to get started on your holiday contest. Choose from our one of our giveaway themes and use these Canva templates for emails, posts, your layout, or wherever you want them!
Bonus Entry/ Unlock Rewards Simple Theme: Get your contest running with no hassle. Use this template to create a simple enter to win contest with actions you want leads to take, or customize it to make it your own!
Interactive Enter to Win Theme: This is great for engagement and content collecting. Encourage leads to share something like a story, what they are thankful for, or even a recipe here and then share the best ones with your email list!
Ways for Leads to Engage and Earn Entries/Prizes for Thanksgiving
There are many ways to creatively encourage your audience to participate. Here is a quick list of some of our favorites:
- What are you thankful for? Encourage entrants to share their thoughts with you either publicly on social media or privately through our SMS option. As the contest is live, use these stories as a way of communicating with your new email list by sharing a few every week.
- Share your favorite recipe or Thanksgiving tradition. A text entry is a great option here too, that way they can earn more easier by texting as they go! Bonus points for adding the recipe or their story to their referral social sharing. Pick a few to share with your email list or reshare on socials.
- Polls. Voting for something holiday themed is a fun interactive way to encourage lead engagement. You can add a poll right to your lead capture and have your audience vote there, or even ask your leads to vote elsewhere (Such as facebook or Twitter) through your actions
- Fall photo sharing contest. Want to engage more on Instagram, Facebook, or other socials that need a viral boost? Have your audience share their favorite fall photos or their holiday decor and tag you! Reshare your favorites.
- Pinterest boards. Your audience tags you in their favorite fall inspo, whether that is a color scheme, nature photos, or cozy decor. Share your favorites on socials and to your email list.
- Pre-orders. Offer incentive to pre-ordering your product by choosing one at random to earn theirs for free.
- Golden ticket. Connect your POS to capture points for purchases in order to encourage sales during your contest period. Have one unique item, whether its a special edition product of your brands or even a smaller item like a candle or keychain, that has a chance of holding a golden ticket. Whoever wins the golden ticket shares a photo on social to collect their prize. A giftcard to your store or for a full meal somewhere would be great here. Be sure to out your contact info or a unique code on the ticket so they can verify their winnings.
Thanksgiving Sweepstakes Grand Prize Ideas
Some ideas to get you started when you think about a grand prize for your holiday sweepstakes.
Thanksgiving dinner- A classic prize option is to offer a dinner for thanksgiving, whether that is delivered to them or curated by a local chef to pick up. Just make sure you state how many people this option serves! A good way to get this contest’s engagement is to encourage referrals. Have your audience share their favorite meal, memory, or recipe on their socials!
Cooking class or an in-home chef experience- Have your audience share what they are thankful for on social platforms linked with their contest referral code to win a fun food-themed experience, whether it is a cooking class or an in-home chef, or even just a nice dinner at a local restaurant.
Store gift card- Sometimes it is easiest to just go with a gift card! If you want to stay holiday feast themed; opt for a Costco, Sams, or local grocery store card so they can really make the most of choosing their own items. If you want to change it up, choose a gift card for something like a clothing store, shoe store, or even a salon as a way of getting them feeling their best in preparation for the holiday.
An activity- If this is a local giveaway or if you want to go big by offering a full trip, offering a fun fall activity is a great option. Give them tickets to a fall festival, pumpkin carving or hay ride, food/ wine tasting, or any holiday-themed event that fits the bill. Have them complete actions to win. Consider adding a fun social aspect by having them share their favorite fall photos and tag you for bonus points!
Donations- Spread the Thanksgiving thankfulness by offering to donate to the winners favorite non-profit. Entice them even further by offering to match that donation as a gift to them as well or donate to both the winner’s no-profit and their friend’s favorite non-profit too! Encourage them to share their favorite organization and why on socials for points.
Thanksgiving Themed Rewards Leads can Earn
If you are running a milestone rewards contest, opt for a big prize and then choose some smaller things like discounts or branded items. If you plan to have multiple winners, mix and match these options- choose a higher value grand prize, and either multiple smaller prizes of similar value or create a prize tier.
- Gift Cards. A classic, simple prize that people will love, especially around the holidays. Try to make the value at least worth a full product or meal.
- A trip. Who doesn’t need a vacation from the holidays? Send them somewhere exotic or even to New York for the Macy’s Day Parade.
- Discounts. Choose this for one of your milestone prizes, smaller tier winners, or even as an incentive to signing up for your giveaway.
- Your virtual product. Whether its a month or a year free of your SAAS product, a digital gift, or a subscription, this is sure to peak your ideal clients interest.
- Activities. Give thema time to remember. This could be anything from a fall festival to a pumpkin carving event, a themed wine and food pairing, or even simply a local sporting event.
- Meals. This option can vary depending on how big you want to make your giveaway. If you are proving a thanksgiving dinner, you should keep the serving size around 5 people. If you want to scale it down, be clear your dinner is for a couple or small family. You could also simply just give away a cooked turkey because we all know the scariest part of the holiday is perfecting the turkey dinner.
- Donations. To be in the giving spirit, donate to charitable organizations on behalf of your winner.
- Basket of Goods. Curate a fun themed basket with smaller items like a blanket, candles, hot coco mix, or branded items.