Tips for a Successful Advent Calendar Gamification Campaign
Looking for better ways of engaging during a big season with highly competitive attention? Check out these tips to leverage your Advent Calendar for diverse marketing goals.
First of all, what is an interactive Advent Calendar?
It’s a special interactive format designed to significantly boost engagement with your audience. For instance, consider the Toms brand Advent Calendar campaign for Christmas. This campaign, created by the sweet makers’ brand, featured a door that opened every Advent Sunday to reveal new competitions or exciting content. An online Advent Calendar is a fantastic tool not only for gathering new marketing permissions but also for strengthening your customers’ brand engagement and loyalty.
Now that you know what this format is about, let’s focus on 10 essential tips to consider when designing your Advent Calendar campaign for maximum impact.
Decide on a Primary Objective:
- Your campaign can serve multiple purposes and track several KPIs, but having one primary objective, along with 2 or 3 secondary goals, ensures a streamlined user experience.
- These are some of the objectives that this formats can help you achieve:
- Lead Generation or Email Subscribers
- Data Enrichment (nurture your CRM / CDP with updated information and preferences from your audiences)
- Brand Engagement (every door is a new oportunity to connect)
- Boost Sales
- Retain Loyalty
Keep It Simple:
- Offering different games each day might sound appealing, but it can also become complex and time-consuming, putting more pressure on achieving outstanding results for a good ROI. Choose the format that is aligned to your campaign goals and make the most of it.
Start Planning Early:
- An Advent Calendar involves many options and considerations. Start planning and implementing well in advance to ensure a smooth campaign. If you choose to set it up for yourself we recommend to consider at least two months in advance. Otherwise we can build it up for you. You provide the brand kit materials and we take care of the rest!
Use a Pre-Launch Campaign:
- Promote your calendar and gain marketing permissions before December 1st. Create a pre-launch teaser campaign to encourage early sign-ups.
Implement an Auto-Submit Feature:
- Avoid requiring participants to fill in the registration form every time they access your calendar. Use an auto-submit feature to auto-populate their details, allowing for a single-click submission.
Prepare a Killer Promotion Strategy:
- Even with an amazing Advent Calendar, lack of effective promotion can lead to disappointing results. Invest in a strong promotion strategy to maximize engagement. Consider owned and paid media. Also depending on which industry you are, some platforms are more appealing than others. If you are B2C you might want to include Meta, Instagram, TikTok, etc. If you are B2B you might want to promote it via LinkedIn Ads or Google. Whatever you choose, remember to place a pop-up banner in your website, and include this in your newsletter communications.
Send Daily or Weekly Reminders:
- Schedule and send reminder emails each time a new door opens, whether daily or weekly, based on your calendar format. You can manage to automate reminders from the Scratcher platform, or integrate Scratcher platform to your mailing tool (Mailchimp, Active Campaign, etc.), this is your choice, and both options are very simple to set up.
Set Tracking Pixels:
- Implement tracking pixels to gain comprehensive insights into your campaign results. This allows you to trace participants’ journeys before they arrive at your calendar and after they leave.
🏆 Choose Your Prizes Wisely:
- Extravagant daily prizes aren’t necessary for success. Often, it’s more about the overall experience. Smaller prizes or one big prize draw on December 24th can still yield remarkable results. Types of prizes:
- Free products: highest engagement with over 90% redemption rates.
- Vouchers (no minimum spend): moderate engagement with 60-70% redemption rates.
- Vouchers (with minimum spend): lower engagement but beneficial for sales with 20-70% redemption rates.
- Extravagant daily prizes aren’t necessary for success. Often, it’s more about the overall experience. Smaller prizes or one big prize draw on December 24th can still yield remarkable results. Types of prizes:
Monitor in Real-Time:
- Since most Advent Calendars run throughout December, monitor the results in real-time. This allows you to make adjustments if needed while the campaign is still active. You would like to check on metrics like:
- Unique Participants: How many people participated each day
- Conversion Rates: From audience to participant
- Prize Redemption Rate: Discount vouchers, consolation prizes, free gifts, etc.
- Time spent with the brand: This is the time the audience spent exposed to your brand and products. Some of the game formats like the Memory Game, Puzzle, or Quizzes have the highest time spent with the brand.
- Customer database growth: The increase in the email subscriber list
- Since most Advent Calendars run throughout December, monitor the results in real-time. This allows you to make adjustments if needed while the campaign is still active. You would like to check on metrics like:
Looking for more interactive formats and options for your Christmas campaign? Discover them here.
Ready to level up your marketing strategy?
Explore the strategy of interactive marketing to create personalised experiences, foster engagement, and establish meaningful connections with your audience. With Scratcher as a partner you will have:
- User-friendly Integration: Easily integrate interactive content with all of your favourite marketing tools
- Customer Support: We're here to assist you every step of the way
- Customisable Templates: Personalise your campaign to reflect your unique brand
- 30+ Interactive Concepts: Luck-based, knowledge-based, and skill-based, designed to meet marketing campaign objectives.
