6 December Contest Ideas That Will Surprise and Delight Your Customers This Year

Updated: October 22, 2026

With all the fanfare and chaos for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday… you may feel like taking a breath in December. But don’t put your feet up just yet. December is another BIG month of consumer spending and a critical time for you to connect with your customers and clients. With Christmas on the horizon and plans for New Year’s Eve in full swing, your customers are in “active” mode when it comes to interacting with brands. Social media contests and giveaways offer an interactive and exciting way to tap into this mindset. Not only will they help you capture leads that you can share all of your great December offers with, but contests also work well for getting in the spirit of the holidays by giving back. Here are six December contest ideas to get your creative juices flowing.

#1. Run a charity drive

For many people, your customers included, December is a time for giving back to those less fortunate. It’s cold, in North America at least, soup kitchens are busy, and young children all over the country are missing out on the full Christmas experience. Think about how this affects your customers and run a charity-based contest that gives back to the community. For example, you may host a toy drive for less fortunate kids, or give away a series of toy packages to local charities of an entrant’s choice. Don’t lose sight of the meaning of this type of contest, either. Yes, it will build goodwill and credibility with your customers, but it’s not about your brand - it’s about the less fortunate people you’re supporting. The rest will happen naturally.

#2. Build suspense with multi-day contests

Advent calendars are all the rage at this time of year. From stationery brands to skincare products and movie behemoths such as Marvel, there is a reason these calendars are so popular. They build suspense and anticipation. Not knowing what prize, gift, or trinket is sitting behind the door on the next day is exciting. For the most part, the actual prize is low-value, but that’s unimportant. It’s about the experience. You can replicate the concept of an advent calendar by running a multi-day contest in December. Giveaway calendars encourage repeat visits to your landing page by offering different prizes every day during a period of time. Participants are incentivized (and excited) to return to your contest day after day to see what prize is next. With ShortStack’s Giveaway Calendar Template you can get your very own multi-day contest up and running in minutes. As well, it allows you to lock future days so that participants will need to come back if they want to find out what is behind the curtain!

ShortStack's Giveaway Calendar Template View and Create Your Own

I recommend offering a diverse range of prizes, with high-value prizes mixed in-between lower value prizes. Start with something big, so people want to come back, and then maintain their interest with big prizes every other day. The cool thing about multi-day digital contests is that you can offer coupon codes that participants can use immediately in your store to boost sales.

#3. Humanize your brand with a live giveaway

With real-time engagement and the reach of live video more impactful than ever, what better time to run a live giveaway with your audience on TikTok Live, Instagram Live, or the other popular formats. You could promote it as a digital Christmas party, New Year’s party, or simply a monster December giveaway. Either way, consider how you can maximize the exposure of your brand with an online event. For example, you may run a full-day once-in-a-lifetime December contest live on Facebook. Throughout the day you could interview interesting guests, play interactive games, give away multiple prizes, and all whilst engaging with your customers. Be sure to run it like an in-person event by informing your database in advance, promoting a signup page with banner ads, and building anticipation for what is to come. And, of course, have a way to follow up with people that participate in the event by collecting the contact details of entrants on a standalone landing page.

#4. Highlight the customer

Shining a light on your customer at this time of year enables you to connect with them on a personal level and create a strong and lasting bond. One way of establishing this type of interaction is with a photo contest. Photo contests not only involve the customer in your marketing but they also help you collect user-generated content. And, there is no shortage of photo contest ideas in December. Dress-ups are always a fan favorite. From the best Santa outfit to a team of Elves, encourage your audience to get creative and wow you with a photo of their outfit. Or, you can have entrants vote for their favorite photo, which creates even more brand engagement.

ShortStack's Voting Contest Template View and Create Your Own

Another December photo contest that garners a lot of attention is a decoration contest. Think of Christmas tree decorations, outdoor light displays, or New Year party celebrations. The more extravagant you can encourage your customers to get with their photo entries, the more interest your contest will receive.

#5. Go beyond Christmas

While I’ve predominantly discussed Christmas marketing ideas in this article, December has so much more to offer. When you’re planning your December contest, don’t be limited by the major winter holidays such as Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanza. Sure, there is New Year’s Eve to consider, too, but there are also numerous other events in this month that make for contest inspiration. December 1st is National Pie Day, the 5th is International Ninja Day, and the 16th is National Chocolate-Covered Anything Day! As with any month in the year, these examples are just scratching the surface. If Christmas or New Year’s Eve don’t feel like a good fit for your brand, or you just want to do something a bit different, check out some other events and themes you could draw inspiration from to engage your customers.

#6. Look towards the new year

Yes, the holiday period can be a very fruitful one for businesses, especially those in retail or eCommerce. But what happens next? December is the perfect time to prepare for the new year. After all, the last thing you want to deal with is a huge drop in sales come January… even though it’s a likely scenario. Instead, you want to find and nurture long-term brand advocates. When planning your December contest, think about how it can aid your marketing efforts in the future. Here are some tips:

• Collect contact details and segmentation data so that you can deliver relevant and personalized marketing messages to new contacts.
• Use the

  refer-a-friend giveaway structure

  to encourage customer referrals and expand your audience reach.

ShortStack's Refer-a-Friend Contest Template View and Create Your Own

• Build a long-term email follow-up sequence for contest entrants that re-engages them at key junctures in the new year.
• Get new product inspiration and feedback from interactive

  “pick a prize”

  contests

  so you can release popular products that people will buy.

ShortStack's Pick Your Prize Giveaway Template View and Create Your Own

All-in-all, make sure your December contest is more than a lead grab. Focus on customer loyalty and retention from the beginning and reap the rewards in the long-term.

Before You Launch: Keep Your December Contest Compliant

A festive giveaway can go sideways fast if the fine print is missing. You don’t need a legal team to run a December contest, but you do need to cover the basics. Here’s what to check before you hit publish. (As always, this is general guidance, not legal advice. For high-value prizes or multi-country contests, talk to a lawyer.)

Know whether you’re running a sweepstakes or a contest. A sweepstakes picks winners at random. A contest picks winners based on skill or merit, like the best photo or the most creative ugly sweater. This matters because a promotion that combines a prize, chance, and “consideration” (a purchase or significant effort to enter) can count as an illegal lottery in the US. That’s why sweepstakes say “No purchase necessary.” If your advent-calendar giveaway gives bonus entries for purchases, you need a free way to enter that has equal odds. Read more about the law, here.

Write official rules, and make them easy to find. Every giveaway needs them, including that quick one-day Instagram promotion. At minimum, cover who is eligible to enter, how users can enter your promotion, a description of the prize, how winners will be selected, and how prizes will be distributed. Also include start and end dates with time zones, the approximate retail value of each prize, and the odds of winning. If you'd like help writing some rules, you can try our free tool, here. Link to the rules from every post and landing page. Some US states also require registration and bonding for high-value sweepstakes. New York and Florida are the best-known examples, so check before offering a big-ticket prize.

Follow each platform’s promotion rules. Social networks set their own rules on top of the law, and they change them often, so reread the current guidelines before every campaign. Facebook is the strictest. Meta’s policy says your promotion must not require or incentivize participants to share, repost, tag others, or otherwise publicize your promotion, so “share to enter” and “tag 3 friends to win” are out. Instead, you can use a form with the Refer-a-Friend feature to reward referrals off-platform. Most platforms also expect a statement that the promotion isn’t sponsored by or affiliated with them. Disclaimers must clarify the contest isn’t run by or affiliated with Facebook, for example.

Be careful with charity tie-ins. If you’re running the charity drive from idea #1, know that saying “we’ll donate $5 for every entry” can make you a “commercial co-venturer” under some US state's law. In fact, more than 20 states have laws that specifically regulate CCVs. In some states, that means paperwork before launch so make sure to do your homework!

Disclose partnerships and influencers. If an influencer or partner brand is promoting your giveaway and received free product, payment, or a cut of the prize pool, the FTC expects that relationship to be clearly disclosed. A buried hashtag at the end of a caption isn’t enough. Clear labels like “#ad” or “Sponsored” near the start of the post are the safe choice.

Collect data with consent. Your December contest is a lead-generation engine, so treat that data carefully. Use a clear, unchecked opt-in box for marketing emails rather than hiding consent in the official rules. Link to your privacy policy on the entry form. If you accept entries from outside the US, privacy laws like GDPR may also apply.

Plan for the winner. Decide in advance how you’ll contact winners and how long they have to respond before you pick an alternate. Remember that US winners may owe taxes on prizes, and you may have to report prizes over a certain value to the IRS. Collect what you need after you pick the winners, not on the entry form.

Taking some time to get these details right means your December contest builds goodwill instead of headaches. That puts you in a much better position heading into the new year.

Conclusion

December is not the time of year to take your foot off the gas pedal. Just because Black Friday is behind us, there is still lots of love and excitement to spread. When coming up with a contest idea this December, think about the mindset of your customers. Are they looking for you to give back to the community? Or are they just on the hunt for deals and coupons! Whatever it is, design your giveaway accordingly and use the data you collect to prepare the business for the new year.