1) Insurance fund increased engagement 6.5x

2) Sofacompany showcases their products

3) INTIMINA’S 12 days calendar combines luck and knowledge games

4) Wallmans’ entertainment calendar

5) Non-profit organization teaches about sclerosis

6) Aros Forsikring (insurance) collecting first party data

7) Destination Limfjorden’s next step in the buyer journey

8) Sweet-deal’s sweet deal

9) City educates on studying there

10) Würth’s calendar with a bonus prize

11) Oticon’s video presentation

12) Rococo Chocolates with a discount

Whatever your business, a digital Advent or Christmas calendar should be part of your company’s toolbox.

The reason is simple:

It can do wonders for your business, whether you’re B2C or B2B, selling consumer goods or knowledge. Digital calendars work so well that demand for them is always high. In fact, that’s how we started out at Playable - creating digital Christmas calendars for businesses.

Long experience shows that digital calendars can do wonders for businesses. They can:

Let’s jump right into some great digital Advent calendar ideas for businesses that you can steal.

It doesn't have to be complicated to work.

Insurance fund Din Sundhedsfaglige A-kasse changed from their daily Facebook Christmas post to a real Christmas calendar. And boom! Their engagement rose beyond all expectations.

Mie Bertelsen, Communication Consultant at Din Sundhedsfaglige A-kasse explains: “The Christmas Calendar performed extremely well, with crazy exposure – 6.5 times more than the year before.”

The calendar was educational, as participants learned what they could use the insurance fund for. Besides reaching far more members, Din Sundhedsfaglige A-Kasse also secured about 16,000 new marketing permissions. How’s that for festive cheer!

A digital Christmas calendar is the perfect opportunity to show your products, as retailer Sofacompany discovered in a campaign in Germany. It’s a great opportunity to promote a different product each day - especially those you want to push for the Christmas sale.

Sofacompany displayed their products behind the calendar doors - and, ingeniously, again on their website’s question page. This meant that people visiting the website with queries would see the products for a second time and might be enticed to buy.

Sofacompany’s Christmas calendar includes a link to their website for people who need help finding answers to their questions. It’s a great driver for web traffic - and can be used for retargeting afterwards, too.

3) INTIMINA’S 12-day calendar combines luck and knowledge games

Who says a Christmas calendar needs to have 24 or 25 doors? Your Christmas calendar doesn't have to cover the entire season. You can also go with a 12 days of Christmas concept like INTIMINA, a global brand focusing on women’s intimate well-being, did. They made a Christmas calendar with 12 doors, where you first had to scratch the door…

…to unlock a question:

After answering the question, people could then sign up to enter a prize draw. Combining the elements of a luck game (scratch card) with the elements of a knowledge game (quiz) is a super way to get attention, and increase brand awareness plus time spent with the brand.

Don’t feel like making 24 or 12 doors? Not to worry. You can still engage your audience with a four-door Advent calendar.

Wallmans operates within the entertainment sector, offering events like shows, circuses, and dinner parties. Their vibrant Advent calendar was expertly on-brand, and offered players the chance to win exciting prizes once a week:

It included a CTA below the calendar, highlighting the amazing prizes up for grabs:

Spa getaways, luxurious dinner parties, and a magical day at the fairground. Who wouldn’t want to come back next week for a chance to win one of those?

The non-profit organization Scheleroseforeningen made a classic calendar with 24 doors. Here you had to scratch to unlock a daily question about sclerosis. A great way of entertaining and educating at the same time.

The insurance company Aros Forsikring used their Advent calendar to collect important first-party data. In this case, phone numbers and postal codes. The experience begins with a form:

…which leads to a classic four-door calendar.

All registrants participate in a simple prize-draw.

Destination Limfjorden, a tourist organization in the north of Denmark, also designed a calendar with 24 doors, but built it up in a different way.

First, participants signed up to enter a daily prize draw, sharing their first-party data in the process - in this case, municipality. To minimize friction, they only had to sign up once.

Next, they would click to open that day’s calendar door:

Finally, they would uncover the prize of the day.

But that’s not all.

Destination Limfjorden saw the opportunity to inform about what else they had to offer by inserting various events below the calendar. This way, they could attract people to take part in activities and further engage with the brand.

So destination Limfjorden is kind of showing you a bonus tip here: always include the next step in the customer journey and don’t just leave your audience hanging there after the game.

Sweet-deal offers…well, sweet deals 😃. Here you can buy deals for various things such as getaways, gifts, restaurants, and much more. Their classic Advent calendar achieved great conversion rates. Who doesn’t want a sweet deal, after all?

The prize was a giftcard for their webshop, so winners could spend more time with the brand and browse for the right present for them. What a win-win situation.

Christmas calendars work for every industry. Here the Finnish city Turku made a calendar to educate about studying in their city.

By scratching the daily door, a quiz was revealed.

If you answered correctly, you could sign up to enter the prize draw. If you answered incorrectly, you were informed of events. Like here where they urged people to join a torchlight procession for students in the city.

Construction supplier Würth made a classic digital Christmas calendar with 24 doors. Besides the chance of winning one of 24 prizes, you could also nab a bonus prize, if you were lucky. The more days you participated, the more likely you were to win the bonus. A great way of nudging people to come back each day and be top-of-mind for 24 days in a row. Here’s the calendar in action:

Each day you had to scratch the door to reveal the daily question:

If you answered correctly, you could then leave your contact information to participate in the daily draw.

However, if you answered wrong, you could try again - and were also shown a CTA to view two separate offers. This was a clever way to showcase specific products and lead people to Würth’s webshop. Another great example of how to guide people in their buyers journey.

We know that video is on everyone's lips. It’s a super media to tell your story and support your digital Advent calendar. Here is an example of how Oticon did it with a short video explaining the calendar and the prizes.

The calendar itself was a click-on-door concept:

Each door revealed a question:

A great way of educating your audience in a fun and engaging way.

Bonus tip: You could also do a video quiz, where your audience has to find the answer to the question in the video. (And in case you were wondering, yes, you can find this option on the Playable platform.)

UK-based Rococo Chocolates created a 25-door digital Christmas calendar in a beautiful design matching their branding and website:

Here, you simply had to click on the door to open it. You were then shown a piece of chocolate, and a daily question:

If you were unlucky, you could either try again the next day or treat yourself to 10% off your next purchase with a discount code. What’s not to like? If you answered correctly, you were sent to the registration page to enter the prize draw.

Well, there you have it: 12 Digital Advent calendar ideas to inspire your business.

PS

The Advent or Christmas calendar format can be used for much more than just a December boost. Why not give these a try:

We hope these ideas help kickstart your Christmas activity in time for a fabulous, festive month.