Weekly Campaign Idea: Advent Calendar

Advent Calendars are a staple of the holidays.In recent years businesses have taken the concept of Advent Calendars and designed them to be a valuable online marketing strategy. ShortStack's Giveaway Calendar Template continues to be our most popular holiday template as businesses and digital marketing agencies use it to create a multi-day giveaway. If you're using ShortStack to design your Advent Calendar we highly recommend reading our Quick Start Guide that provides step-by-step instructions for designing your Campaign successfully.In the meantime, here are some additional best practices to keep in mind when strategizing and designing your Advent Calendar.

‍1. Pick the right number of days

‍Most advent calendars are 24 or 25 days long. Most of our European clients run their Advent Calendars for 25 days. We also see businesses that only run their calendars for 5-10 days or even 12 days. You can base the number of days for your calendar on the number of prizes you have to give away.

‍2. Mix and match prizes

‍The key to a successful Advent Calendar is keeping your fans coming back each day. A great way to do this is by mixing and matching your prizes. If you offer your best prize on the first day then your fans won't have much motivation to come back the next day. You also don't have to do a giveaway every single day. In today's example, Brother Australia, has mixed up their giveaway with projects, handy tips/tricks, inspirational quotes and exciting offers. Seeing as you don't reveal the prize until the day of the promotion, mixing things up will intrigue your followers enough to check in with your promotion each day.

‍3. Include share options

‍Building features into your Campaigns that enable sharing and encourage users to tell their friends about your business is crucial. ShortStack has several features to motivate sharing, including enabling the share prompt, incentivizing referrals with a refer-a-friend feature, and embedding your campaign on your website. All of these methods provide extra ways for your fans to share your Campaign and drive more traffic to you and your business.

‍4. Promote, promote, promote

‍We usually recommend not flooding your audiences with giveaway announcements, but Advent Calendars provide reason to talk about your promotion A LOT. You can and should be posting about your calendar every day, especially if you have a different prize each day, you'll need to let your fans know each day what's up for grabs.

‍5. Keep mobile in mind

‍A variety of your visitors will most likely visit your Campaign through a mobile device. It's important to make sure that your Campaign displays and functions on mobile so you don't lose this audience. If you're not sure about how big a mobile fanbase you have, there are a few ways to find out. One, look in your Google Analytics. Two, look in your Facebook analytics. And three, look in your ShortStack analytics at previous Campaigns.

Example of an Advent Calendar

Designed by Text 100 Australia, an integrated communications consultancy, this Advent Calendar was designed for Brothers Australia. Brothers Australia is a leading brand that produces quality innovative products for the print and imaging, labeling and sewing markets. When you click on the day, it reveals one of their exciting offers.