10 digital Advent calendars ideas

Would you like to offer your subscribers, prospects or customers an engaging and original marketing campaign for Christmas or other times of the year? Offer them a digital Advent calendar!

The concept is simple: you create your digital calendar and customise it completely. You then publish it on the channels of your choice (your website, Facebook page, mobile application, etc.) and invite your visitors to come and discover a new surprise every day. Behind each box of your calendar, you choose the surprise you want to hide: a promotion, a sample, a unique code, a video, an exclusive content, a game, a contest, etc.

This action will allow you to:

Communicate on your products or those of your partners;
Hold your audience on the lookout for as long as you want;
Engage your audience on your online (website, social networks, mobile apps, etc.) and offline (in-store via a tablet, etc.) channels;
Build audience loyalty by encouraging them to return to your channels daily with a new surprise each day;
Increase your traffic, online or in-store;
Convert your prospects into customers by giving away discount coupons or unique codes;
Go viral.

Time for inspiration! Discover 10 original Advent calendar ideas that you can launch for Christmas and many other times of the year.

1. Daily Mail and TicketMaster’s mini calendars

Your Advent calendar doesn’t necessarily have to last the entire Christmas period. You can engage and retain your audience for as long as you want.

The Daily Mail decided to launch the calendar “12 Days of Christmas” and to offer its readers travel and dinners in starred restaurants for 12 days. The mechanism used was the prize draw. To participate, readers had to fill out a form with their contact details.

The ticket sales and distribution company TicketMaster launched a 10-day challenge calendar. Every day, users had to face a different challenge to try to win a gift card. They had to either take a quiz, a personality test or play a memory game. Two winners were selected per day.

2. Weldom’s web to store calendar

The French DIY store chain Weldom created an Advent calendar full of promotions, discount codes and gifts to win. Every day, users discovered online the surprise they could win… in one of the 48 participating stores of the brand! An excellent way to bring your online visitors to your points of sale.

3. AS Monaco’s jackpots calendar

Football Club AS Monaco launched an Advent calendar with 24 jackpots. After identifying themselves, either by using a form or their Facebook IDs, users could participate in a different jackpot every day, offering various gifts (signed jersey, fan kit, gift cards, etc.). The advantage is that they immediately discovered whether or not they had won.

4. The Carrefour and Gulli’s partners calendar

The Advent calendar is the perfect opportunity to communicate about your products or those of your partners. You can promote a different partner every day, as the Carrefour supermarket did, or you can collaborate with a single partner, such as the TV channel Gulli with its advertiser Playmobil. The Advent calendar is a great way to attract new advertising partners!

5. Uni-Médias and Total’s post-Christmas calendar

With the Advent calendar, you can also capitalise on the post-Christmas period! Maison Créative magazine, part of the Uni-media group, decided to create an Astro-deco calendar with its partners. From January 1 to 28, the magazine offered a lot of gifts to extend the celebrations, which users could win by a draw. And, as a bonus, a decorative tip was given by astrological sign every day.

The oil company Total also decided to extend the celebrations with an Advent calendar full of gifts and games. Every day, a puzzle, a memory or a prize draw was offered to users to try to win lots of gifts. The Advent calendar was directly integrated into the Total site via an iframe.

The Advent calendar is much more than a Christmas format! You can create one for any event (sports competition, corporate events, festivals, etc.) and choose the number of boxes you want to display.

6. The Halloween calendar

The Bayard Group’s website dedicated to future and young parents Enfant.com created a calendar full of ideas for activities to do with children for Halloween (colouring, DIY, recipes, games, etc.). Each box refers to an article or video hosted on Enfant.com website.

7. The exhibitions calendar

The website Wondercity, referencing the best of early stimulation and recreational activities for children from 0 to 12 years old, created a calendar with the temporary exhibitions not to be missed and to be visited with the whole family. Each box lead users to an article on Wondercity with more explanations about the exhibition in question.

8. The Tour de France calendar

Throughout the Tour de France, Le Journal de Mickey launched a calendar, easily integrated via an iframe on its website. Every day a new box opened to unlock a question on the Tour de France. Participants had to answer them correctly and then enter the draw to try to win one of the collector gifts.

9. Pre-election calendar

26 days before the elections, the Belgian party DéFI (Democratic Federalist Independent) launched a “pre-election calendar” published on its website and Facebook page. Every day, until the date of the elections, a new box opened to unlock exclusive content. An original and interactive way to increase the party’s visibility, virality and be top of mind on polling day.

10. The Game of Thrones calendar

Finally, OCS, the only HBO programmes’ broadcaster in France, challenged its users with different games (quiz, memory, puzzle, swiper, true or false, etc.) about Game of Thrones. They had to test their knowledge to try to win one of the 400 prizes offered!