13 Christmas Giveaway Ideas I Use to Drive Holiday Sales

The holiday season is the most competitive time of year to run promotions. The businesses that cut through the noise run Christmas giveaway ideas that people want to share, not just discount codes that blur together.

I’ve used RafflePress to run Christmas giveaways for years. In this guide I’ll share the best christmas giveaway ideas and marketing strategies for small businesses. You’ll find specific giveaway formats, timing advice, and ready-to-use holiday slogans.

How to Plan Your Christmas Marketing Strategy

The first step is setting a clear goal before you launch anything. A S.M.A.R.T goal (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-based) gives your marketing campaign focus and makes results easier to measure.

For example: “Increase overall gross profits between October and December this year, compared to the same period last year.” That’s specific, measurable, and time-bound.

When Should You Start Your Christmas Marketing?

Start planning in September and launch your first campaigns by mid-October — 55% of holiday shoppers plan to buy online, and the window to capture their attention is earlier than most businesses expect.

If you wait until November, ad costs have already spiked and competitors have a head start. I’ve seen businesses scramble to set up giveaways in early December when their email lists are cold and their social accounts have no momentum. Planning eight weeks early makes every tactic below more effective.

Use September to choose your giveaway format and set up your RafflePress campaign. Use October to grow your email list and warm up your audience. By November, you’re ready to flip the switch.

Best Christmas Giveaway Ideas and Marketing Strategies

Once you have a goal and a start date, here are the best christmas giveaway ideas and marketing strategies to put them into action.

1. Run a Christmas Giveaway on Your Website

Giveaways are an excellent way to build a buzz around any holiday. But at Christmas, they’re even more popular because they tie in with the gift-giving theme.

Moreover, brands running giveaways gain followers up to 70% faster than those that don’t. And giveaways and contests have the power to:

• Send tons of traffic to your website
• Increase your social media followers
• Grow your email list
• Promote seasonal products

So one of the best ways to kick off the holiday season is to run a Christmas-themed giveaway on your website. And if you’re a WordPress website owner, RafflePress is the best tool for the job.

RafflePress is a powerful WordPress plugin that lets you create any type of online giveaway.

It comes with various premade giveaway templates to help you get started. And with a drag and drop giveaway builder, you can customize your giveaway to suit your business needs.

In addition, users can enter your giveaway using almost any method, including:

• Following on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and LinkedIn
• Signing up for your email newsletter
• Subscribing to your podcast
• Following you on Twitch
• Sharing your giveaway on social media
• Uploading photos
• Answering questions

You can connect RafflePress with popular email marketing services, use the built-in giveaway rules generator to stay compliant, and even draw winners randomly.

And the best thing is, you won’t need to leave your WordPress site to manage your contest.

Here are the christmas giveaway formats that work best for small businesses:

• Tag-to-win: Ask followers to tag a friend in your post for an entry. Low effort for participants, high reach for you.
• Photo contest: Ask for Christmas-themed photos. Builds user-generated content and works well on Instagram.
• 12 Days giveaway: Reveal a new prize or discount each day. Keeps your audience coming back all season.
• Partner giveaway: Pool prizes with a complementary business. You share costs and each other’s audiences.
• Prize draw: Single grand prize with multiple entry methods. RafflePress tracks every entry automatically.

Get Started with RafflePress Today.

Or follow this guide to create an online contest in WordPress.

2. Run an Advent Calendar Giveaway

An advent calendar giveaway reveals a new prize, discount, or freebie each day from December 1 through December 24.

Instead of a one-day traffic spike, you get 24 days of sustained engagement. Each daily reveal gives you fresh content to share and a reason to send an email.

I run advent calendar giveaways with a mix of prizes. Small daily wins like discount codes or digital downloads build toward a bigger grand prize on December 24. This keeps participants engaged across the full month, not just on the first day.

You can run this with RafflePress by setting up a new giveaway each day. An email sequence that reveals each prize on a schedule works too, and is easier to manage. The email approach is easier to manage if you’re short on setup time.

For the prizes themselves, mix physical and digital options. Gift cards, product bundles, free consultations, and exclusive discounts all work well. The key is making each day’s prize feel worth opening.

3. Make a Product Page for Popular Christmas Products

Another way to start your Christmas marketing off with a bang is to create a dedicated landing page promoting your most popular products. This is an excellent Christmas promotion idea for retail.

Landing pages are effective because they focus users’ attention on what’s right in front of them. They also use smart design features to keep shoppers engaged and follow through with their purchases, like:

• Animated headlines
• Contrasting call to action (CTA) buttons
• Eye-catching images
• Customer testimonials
• Trust badges

So showing products on a landing page is an excellent way to drive sales on your top-selling products.

The easiest way to create a landing page in WordPress is with SeedProd, the best WordPress page builder plugin. With hundreds of customizable templates and an easy drag-and-drop page builder, you can create stunning landing pages in less than 30 minutes.

SeedProd also has all those smart design features we just mentioned, as well as dedicated blocks for:

• Giveaways
• Social media embeds
• WooCommerce product grids
• Shopping carts
• Checkout pages
• Image carousels
• Pricing tables
• Google maps
• FAQs

You can also use SeedProd to put your site in maintenance mode or create a coming soon page. This landing page plugin is fast, bloat-free, and works with any WordPress theme.

Get Started with SeedProd Today.

Or follow this guide to create a landing page in WordPress.

4. Create Urgency with Countdown Timers

Do you want your website visitors to get the fear of missing out (FOMO)? Then you need to start using scarcity in your Christmas marketing campaigns.

Scarcity marketing is the idea that when something is scarce, it’s more valuable. And as a consequence, shoppers are more likely to snap up a deal with a limited-time offer or limited stock.

For example, offering a discount code for buying a Christmas tree is much more effective, with a timer showing how long is left to get the offer. Without a countdown timer, it’s just another promotion.

With that in mind, using countdown timers to create a sense of urgency is another top Christmas marketing idea. And creating urgency timers is easy with a tool like OptinMonster.

OptinMonster is the most powerful lead generation software for small businesses. It helps you increase leads and sales with opt-in campaigns like:

• Lightbox popups
• Floating bars
• Scroll boxes
• Gamified wheels

And with its drag-and-drop campaign builder, you can create countdown timers to generate urgency.

What’s more, OptinMonster offers detailed targeting options so that you can show campaigns to the right people at the right time.

Get Started with OptinMonster Today.

Or, follow this guide to create scarcity with countdown timers.

5. Make a Christmas Gift Guide

Like the last Christmas marketing idea, you can also create a Christmas gift guide to promote seasonally appropriate products.

Gift guides are ideal for publishing on your blog because they’re highly shareable on social media. And as a result, you can attract shoppers to your website who may not have been aware of your brand.

You can also use your gift guide as part of your giveaway campaign by embedding your RafflePress giveaway widget in your blog post. From there, you can ask users to comment with their favorite gift for a chance to win your grand prize.

Follow this guide to learn how to do a blog giveaway with RafflePress.

6. Use In-Browser Push Notifications

If you’re not using push notifications on your website, Christmas is the best time to start. In-browser push notifications are short messages that show in visitors’ browsers even after leaving your site.

What’s more, push notifications give you a direct line of communication to tell subscribers anything you like. For example, you can send notifications about:

• New gift guides on your blog
• Christmas flash sales
• Last call for Christmas shipping

Use them sparingly; otherwise, you risk overloading subscribers with too much messaging.

With that in mind, it’s easy to add push notifications to your site with tools like PushEngage.

PushEngage is the most popular push notification software for small businesses. It takes minutes to set up and lets you send any type of push campaign to website visitors.

Get Started with PushEngage today.

Or follow this guide to create push notifications in WordPress.

7. Run a Christmas Social Media Photo Contest

Social media explodes over the holiday season, so you’ll need a Christmas marketing idea that stands out and grabs attention right away. One way you can tackle that is with a social media photo contest.

Photo contests go viral on social media networks like Instagram and Facebook. And they’re an excellent way to increase brand awareness among your target audience.

Social media photo contests work by asking users to share or submit a photo around a specific theme or product for a chance to win a prize. Often photo contests include branded giveaway hashtags that make it easy for people to find your giveaway.

For example, you could ask people to submit:

• Ugly Christmas sweater selfies
• Christmas gift hauls
• Gift ideas
• Christmas party outfits

You can create a social media photo contest easily with RafflePress. Because it includes a dedicated giveaway landing page, you can share your giveaway anywhere online, including on social media.

When running your Christmas photo contest to attract more entries, don’t forget to share people’s submissions.

8. Launch a Countdown to Christmas Campaign

You’ve probably seen many brands jump on the ’12 days of Christmas’ trend over the years. And the reason behind that is it works.

The idea behind this Christmas marketing campaign is that over 12 days, you focus on promoting discounted items one day at a time. So each day offers a discount for a different product.

Besides mixing things up for your audience, Christmas countdowns add scarcity to your marketing efforts. Since each item has a discount for 24 hours, shoppers have to act fast to get the deal.

Here’s how to run a 12 days of christmas marketing campaign that actually builds momentum:

• Plan your prize ladder: Start with smaller discounts or digital downloads and build up to your best offer on day 12. This rewards people who follow along the whole way.
• Use email or push to deliver each reveal: Schedule one email per day so subscribers don’t have to remember to check your site. A subject line like “Day 4 deal is live – 6 hours only” drives urgency.
• Keep each deal to 24 hours: Scarcity only works if it’s real. End each offer at midnight so the next one has genuine freshness.
• Run a flash giveaway on one of the days: Break up the discount pattern with a freebie entry contest. This spikes shares and brings in new subscribers mid-campaign.

Some of the best 12 days of Christmas promotion formats include digital advent calendars, charity offers, gift bundles, and influencer takeovers.

9. Run Remarketing Ads

You’ve likely seen remarketing before, even if you don’t know it. A good example is an online advertisement for a product you’ve searched for.

It might seem creepy having past product research follow you around online. But remarketing is a powerful way to bring people back — retargeting can increase average conversion rates by 147%, making it one of the highest-ROI tactics in your holiday mix.

By showing ads related to your recent search, brands are effectively telling you to reconsider. They may even dangle an incentive like a discount to sweeten the deal.

So why not take the same approach for your holiday campaign? You can run remarketing ads with Google Ads, Facebook Tracking Pixel, and similar sites.

10. Run an Email Marketing Campaign

Another Christmas marketing idea for small businesses is to use your existing subscriber list. Email marketing consistently delivers strong holiday returns — Mailchimp data shows email campaigns drove 20% more revenue year-over-year in the weeks leading up to Giving Tuesday 2024.

Your email list is a direct line to people who already know your business. Since users signed up for news and updates from you, they’re more likely to open your emails and act on your offers during the holidays.

Subject lines matter more during the holidays when inboxes are full. Try formats like “Your Christmas deal expires tonight” or “Last chance: free shipping ends at midnight” to drive urgency.

If you need some help getting started, check out these holiday email marketing tips.

11. Offer Free Shipping and Returns

When people look for gift ideas, they’ll shop at many different places. And as a consequence, shipping fees can add up fast.

To stand out over the holiday season, offer free shipping to shoppers. 75% of shoppers say free shipping significantly influences their purchase decision, so if you’re not offering it, competitors who do have a clear advantage.

And while we’re on the topic of free delivery, you can also throw in free returns. Your customers know that if loved ones don’t like their gift, they can return it without extra fees.

Put it this way; if you ease your audience’s concerns and worries, they’re more likely to shop with you.

12. Promote Gift Cards: Christmas Marketing Ideas for Retail

Next are Christmas promotion ideas for retail stores of any kind – gift cards. Sending loved ones a gift card has to be one of the most popular gift ideas around.

Gift cards represent simplicity to people struggling for the perfect gift. But if you have gift cards for your eCommerce store, don’t assume that shoppers know about them.

Instead, be proactive and promote your gift cards to your target audience during the holidays. For instance, you can promote your gift cards:

• On social media, in your Christmas promotion message
• In your email newsletter
• As a giveaway prize
• In on-site popups

Even though it’s an obvious tactic, you’d be surprised by how often gift cards make the perfect last-minute Christmas gift for forgetful shoppers.

Check out our guide to learn how to do a gift card giveaway.

13. Use Christmas Slogans to Drive Click-Throughs

Your promotions are only as effective as the copy that gets people to click. A strong christmas slogan for your promotions does three things: creates urgency, feels festive, and tells shoppers what they get.

I keep a list of go-to holiday slogans that I adapt for different campaigns. Here are some ready-to-use options you can take and customize for your business:

Urgency slogans:

• “Last chance for Christmas delivery”
• “Offer ends December 24 – don’t miss out”
• “Only [X] left – get it before it’s gone”

Festive and discount slogans:

• “Give the gift they actually want”
• “Ho ho – [X]% off this Christmas”
• “Unwrap your savings this holiday season”
• “The gift that keeps on giving”

Giveaway-specific slogans:

• “Enter to win your perfect Christmas”
• “Tag a friend who deserves this gift”
• “Share and win this holiday season”

Swap in your product name, discount amount, or prize value to make these specific to your campaign. Specific always outperforms generic.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the best christmas giveaway ideas for small businesses?

The best christmas giveaway ideas for small businesses are tag-to-win contests, photo contests with a Christmas theme, 12 Days of Christmas deal sequences, and advent calendar giveaways.

Tag-to-win works well on social media because each entry reaches a new audience. Advent calendars drive sustained engagement across the full month of December. Tools like RafflePress make all of these easy to set up in WordPress without coding.

How do I run a christmas giveaway online?

To run a christmas giveaway online, install RafflePress on your WordPress site, choose a giveaway template, set your entry methods (email signup, social follow, photo upload), and publish your giveaway.

Connect it to your email marketing service so new entries go straight to your list. Promote the giveaway on social media and in your email newsletter. RafflePress draws a random winner when your campaign ends.

When should I start my christmas marketing?

Start planning your christmas marketing in September and launch your first campaigns by mid-October. Starting early gives you time to build your email list before the holiday rush, warm up your social media audience, and test which giveaway formats get the best response. Businesses that wait until November face higher ad costs and a more crowded inbox.

What is a 12 days of christmas marketing campaign?

A 12 days of christmas marketing campaign runs a new deal, discount, or giveaway for 12 consecutive days in December. Each day reveals one offer that expires in 24 hours, creating daily urgency and a reason to come back.

You can deliver each reveal by email, push notification, or social post. Structuring the prizes as a ladder, with the best offer on day 12, keeps your audience engaged through the end of the campaign.

Bonus Marketing Ideas for Your Website

Giveaways are an excellent way to raise awareness and boost leads, but they’re only the tip of the iceberg. Take a look at these other marketing ideas to help grow your business:

• Winning St. Patrick’s Day Marketing Ideas That Work
• Surprising Dental Marketing Ideas to Grow Your Office
• Best Affiliate Marketing Ideas + Tips to Boost Sales
• Referral Marketing Ideas Proven to Earn More Customers
• Online Apartment Marketing Ideas Guaranteed to Attract Renters
• Best Sports Marketing & Promotion Ideas to Borrow Now
• Top Halloween Marketing Ideas to Get More Sales
• Valentine’s Day Marketing Ideas That Build Loyalty

And there you have it!

We hope this article helped you find the top Christmas marketing ideas for your small business. You might also like these top eCommerce marketing tools to scale your store over Christmas.

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