Traditionally, the Twelve Days of Christmas begin on December 25 and continue through January 5, followed by Epiphany on January 6. In marketing, however, brands often adapt the idea into a 12-day countdown leading up to Christmas, when audiences are already shopping, engaging with holiday content, and looking forward to the celebrations.
That flexibility gives marketers plenty of possibilities. You could run 12 daily giveaways on social media, create a digital Christmas calendar with a new surprise behind each window, offer a different prize every day, or run one giveaway where participants increase their opportunities to win by returning throughout the campaign.
In this article, we’ll explore 12 Days of Christmas giveaway ideas using real campaign examples, interactive mechanics, and Christmas promotion templates that you can adapt to your own brand.
Looking for more holiday promotion inspiration? Explore our Christmas Campaign Ideas hub for more Christmas giveaways, interactive games, and Advent Calendars.
How to Run a 12 Days of Christmas Giveaway on Social Media
One of the simplest ways to run a 12 Days of Christmas giveaway on social media is to publish a new giveaway each day. Keep the participation mechanic easy to understand, introduce a new prize with each post, and use a consistent campaign design so followers can immediately recognize each new installment.
Bahco Australia, the Australian division of the professional hand tool manufacturer, followed this approach with its 12 Days of Giveaways campaign on Facebook. Each day introduced a different prize and a new opportunity to participate. For example, Day 11 featured a large bundle of Bahco merchandise, while Day 12 offered a professional tool set together with branded items. Keeping the entry mechanic consistent while changing the prize gave followers a reason to return for each new Facebook giveaway.
Run Your Christmas Giveaways Across Instagram and Facebook
Your 12 Days of Christmas campaign doesn’t have to take place on just one social network. If your audience is active on both Instagram and Facebook, you can publish giveaway content across both channels and bring the eligible participants together in a single winner selection.
National Express, a UK public transportation company, used this approach for its 12 Days of Christmas campaign. Its daily giveaways included prizes supplied by different attractions and events, such as tickets to the National SEA LIFE Centre Birmingham and Solihull Summer Fest. Participation from its Facebook and Instagram giveaway posts was brought together in a single Multi-Network Giveaway with Easypromos.
This approach combines two useful strategies: brands can reach communities across multiple social networks while working with partners to create a more varied selection of prizes throughout the 12 days.
Match Christmas Giveaway Prizes to Your Audience
The prizes don’t need to become increasingly expensive to keep participants interested. Relevance to your audience can be more important than the monetary value of the reward.
Syndicate Smokedown & Music Festival, a US music festival, used its 12 Days of Smokedown Giveaways to offer prizes connected directly to its community. The final giveaway offered two VIP tickets to the festival itself. For an audience already interested in the event, an exclusive experience like this provides a strong incentive while reinforcing what the brand is actually about.
Think about what your audience would genuinely value: exclusive access, tickets, limited-edition products, experiences, product bundles, or rewards connected directly to their interests can make the campaign more relevant than a series of generic Christmas gifts.
The 12 Days format can also work for influencers and content creators who want to reward their communities during the holiday season. Influencer Andy Benavides, for example, ran “Andy’s 12 Days of Xmas” on Instagram, with followers participating for prizes such as a Dyson Airwrap by following the account and mentioning a friend in the comments.
For creators, a series of Christmas giveaways can provide recurring content throughout the holiday period while giving followers repeated reasons to interact with the account.
Want to read our 12 Days of Christmas social media campaign success story? Discover how Tombow USA used a series of Instagram giveaways to engage its online community in our 12 Days of Christmas success story.
How to Create a 12 Days of Christmas Advent Calendar
A digital Advent Calendar is a practical way to bring all 12 days of a Christmas campaign together in one place. Instead of publishing a separate promotion every day, participants return to the same campaign and unlock a new window with a prize, game, check-in, piece of content, or other activity.
This format makes it easier to create a consistent experience across the full campaign while still giving participants a reason to return each day. You can also combine different mechanics behind the calendar windows, depending on your objectives: distribute prizes, encourage repeat visits, collect data, share branded content, or increase the number of opportunities participants have to enter a final random drawing.
Berry Recruitment, a UK recruitment agency, used this approach for a 12-day Digital Advent Calendar aimed specifically at employers and hiring managers. The campaign ran from December 11 to 22, with participants registering to take part and winners selected afterward through random drawings. The example shows how the 12 Days of Christmas format can also work for a B2B audience, not only consumer brands.
You can also use a simpler check-in format where participants return each day and open the corresponding calendar window to register their participation. This creates recurring engagement without requiring a different game or giveaway every day.
Explore this 12 Days of Christmas demo to experience the daily check-in flow. You can also copy the demo as a template and customize it for your own campaign.
What Games Can You Include in a 12 Days of Christmas Campaign?
A 12 Days of Christmas campaign doesn’t have to feature the same activity every day. Combining different games and prize mechanics can make each new window feel different and give participants another reason to return and discover what comes next.
With an Easypromos Advent Calendar, you can unlock different activities progressively throughout the campaign. For example, one day could challenge participants with a Memory game, the next with a Puzzle or Word Search, and another with Hidden Objects. You can also incorporate prize-based mechanics such as Spin the Wheel or Scratch & Win, as well as quizzes, check-ins, and random drawings.
You don’t need to create 12 completely different activities, either. Alternate a selection of games with instant prizes, giveaways, or simpler participation mechanics to keep the campaign varied without making it unnecessarily complex.
Think about the purpose of each activity when planning the calendar. Skill-based games can encourage friendly competition, instant-win mechanics can distribute prizes immediately, and check-ins or giveaways can offer a quicker participation experience. Combining these formats lets you create a 12-day campaign in which participants don’t know exactly what they’ll discover behind the next window.
Want to see how different games can work together in one Christmas campaign? Explore our Advent Calendar Multi-Game demo to play the different challenges and see how they can be combined in a single interactive experience.
How to Encourage Daily Participation in a 12 Days of Christmas Campaign
One of the advantages of a 12 Days of Christmas campaign is the opportunity to bring participants back more than once. Instead of revealing everything on the first visit, unlock new content, games, or opportunities to win progressively so there is something new to discover each day.
Daily participation can be encouraged in different ways. You might reveal a new prize every day, let users complete a daily check-in, unlock a different game, or give participants additional opportunities to enter a final random drawing each time they return. The right approach depends on whether your main objective is repeat engagement, prize distribution, product discovery, or simply creating an entertaining Christmas experience.
Create a Daily Elf on the Shelf Challenge
Another option is to turn the popular search for a hidden Christmas elf into a recurring 24 day challenge. Combine Multi-Game with Hidden Objects so that each day reveals an image where participants have to find the elf hidden somewhere in the scene.
Our travel-themed example takes participants to a different destination each day, with the Christmas elf hiding in a new location every time. It shows how an airline, travel company, or tourism brand could use each daily challenge to showcase destinations while giving participants a reason to return throughout the campaign.
The concept can easily be adapted to other industries. A retailer could hide the elf among its products, a hotel group could feature different properties, or a brand could create scenes based on its products, locations, or Christmas campaign creative.
Can you find the elf? Explore our Elf on the Shelf Multi-Game demo and return each day to discover a new destination and Hidden Objects challenge.
What Prizes Can You Offer in a 12 Days of Christmas Giveaway?
A 12 Days of Christmas campaign gives you plenty of flexibility when planning prizes. You could offer a different reward every day, alternate between smaller and larger prizes, create themed prize bundles, or build anticipation toward a bigger reward on the final day.
The prizes should reflect both your audience and the structure of the campaign. Daily rewards can encourage participants to keep coming back, while a larger final prize can create anticipation as the campaign progresses. Brands can also combine their own products or services with gift cards, experiences, limited-edition merchandise, or prizes supplied by campaign partners.
One particularly effective approach is to make Day 12 the grand finale. EuroPhoria, a US medical spa, used this strategy for its Christmas campaign. After featuring different service prizes throughout the previous days, its final giveaway brought together all 11 earlier service prizes and added a trip for two to Santorini.
This type of prize structure gives the campaign a sense of progression. Rather than every day carrying the same weight, participants know that something bigger is coming at the end, helping the final day stand out as the culmination of the campaign.
You can also adapt the prize structure to your campaign objective. For example, use your own products to support product discovery, offer branded merchandise to reward an established community, collaborate with complementary brands on prize bundles, or use experiences and exclusive access when those rewards are particularly relevant to your audience.
Create a 12 Days of Christmas Campaign for Your Brand
The 12 Days of Christmas is a flexible campaign concept that can be adapted to different audiences, channels, and marketing objectives. Run a series of social media giveaways, create an interactive Advent Calendar, reveal a new game each day, or combine prizes and challenges to encourage people to return throughout the campaign.
You don’t have to follow the traditional Twelve Days of Christmas dates, either. As the examples in this article show, brands can turn the concept into a countdown leading up to Christmas and adapt the format, mechanics, and prizes to suit their campaign.
With Easypromos, you can bring these ideas together in a branded digital experience, manage participation and prize distribution, and create a Christmas campaign that gives your audience something new to look forward to each day.
