13 contest ideas to boost your back-to-school campaigns
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The threat of going back-to-school might loom over the boys of summer like a dark cloud, but for customer-facing businesses, it’s a huge opportunity. 📣
A new season presents new consumer needs and new consumer attitudes – it’s a natural reset in the commercial world. This one just needs a shot of adrenaline to bring out its full potential, and that’s where gamification comes in…
By incorporating games into your marketing and sales this back-to-school season, you can create engaging experiences to captivate your targets, collect data, get opt-ins for your newsletter, and publicise seasonal offers and products and distribute promo codes.
Read on to discover our 11 back-to-school contest ideas that could bring your September-starting campaigns to life.
1. The magic blackboard contest (Scratch Card Game)
White boards and interactive monitors may have rendered chalk and slate somewhat obsolete, but nothing quite evokes the idea of scholastic achievement, classrooms, and academia like a blackboard. That makes adapting a Scratch Card Game perfect for your back-to-school campaign.
Players go to erase your brand’s message on the blackboard, only to discover they’ve won a prize, they’ve been entered into a prize draw, or they’ve earned a promo code. This format speaks universally across the back-to-school message, and can easily be customised to the specific needs of any individual business.
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2. The school essentials crossword (Crossword and Word Search Game)
You set the scene: it’s the night before the first day back at school, but the backpack 🎒 is completely empty. Challenge players to solve clues or hints, and then find the essential back-to-school supplies in a wordsearch format. Players must find the words as quickly as possible to be ready in time for their first class on Monday morning. It’s engaging, it’s on-theme, and you can encourage entries with prizes for the fastest finishers.
3. Pop quiz (Quiz)
The kids may be the ones back at school, but we’re not letting you off the hook! Pop quiz: how much can you remember from your school days? 🧠
You may have dreaded them as a teenager, but as an adult, a pop quiz is a welcome diversion – and most of your audience will share that sentiment. Create a contest based on school knowledge: literature, mathematics, chemistry, or history and its famous characters. You can customise the Quiz on Drimify to include videos to make the experience more immersive – such as having an actual teacher (or an actor pretending to be a teacher) ask the questions.
4. The digital treasure hunt (Dynamic Path™)
Organise a back-to-school themed online treasure hunt with Drimify’s Dynamic Path™, where participants will embark on different mini-games and solve puzzles to reach the hidden treasure: an instant win game with ✨ many prizes at stake ✨.
This treasure can be an exclusive promotional code, early access to one of your new services or products, or even a flagship product from your brand as the grand prize. The beauty of this multi-level format is that it gives you multiple chances to engage your audience with your branded message, and allows you to nurture the relationship over a longer period.
Encourage participants to share their progress on social media to increase your brand visibility and attract new players.
5. Playground penalty shootout (Football Game)
Offer your audience a branded penalty shootout ⚽ where participants must score as many goals as possible. Offer exclusive rewards to the top 10 goal scorers through a prize draw to encourage football fans to participate.
On the other side of the Atlantic? Does your brand of football come in an irregular shape? Soccer not gonna cut it in your particular locale? We’ve got an American Football game engine that can be customised too. 😉
6. A back-to-class jigsaw (Puzzle)
For this contest, you create a digital jigsaw puzzle 🧩 by uploading an image relevant to your sector. It could be for the launch of a new product or service, or to coincide with a seasonal start-of-term promotion. Users must put the image together from the puzzle pieces as quickly as possible, and the player completing it in the fastest possible time wins the contest.
7. School supplies prize wheel promotion (Spin the Wheel)
Offer a contest on a tablet at your points of sale, or on stands in order to distribute prizes: school supplies, samples of your products, or even vouchers. Participants will spin the wheel and win different prizes depending on which section the cursor lands on.
8. End of summer DIY creative challenge (Video Contest)
Invite your community to share their end of summer DIY projects ready for the start of a new school year. This could include creating the perfect workspace, repurposing old office furniture, or even redecorating the home office 🛠️ (or any other original ideas that work for your brand and the campaign theme). Entrants can submit videos of their creations, and winners could receive gift cards for craft or DIY stores.
This could work for anything crafty, arty, or generally creative where users have a process and an end product to show off for their efforts. Whether it makes more sense for your business to having a Video Contest related to cooking, building models, or painting.
9. The back-to-school quiz (Quiz)
Get to know your target audience by customising a Quiz. Users can discover your universe and your products and services through various questions illustrated by images, videos, and even sounds.
Don’t forget to end the experience with a CTA button that redirects players to your strategic website pages.
10. Who can reach 2,048? (2048 Game)
Back-to-school already? Who’s ready for a bit of quick maths? Invite your audience to play the 2048 Game and shoot for the highest score possible.
Offer attractive rewards for top performers, and-or distribute promotional codes to everyone who takes part. This game can be adapted to various industries by customising the content and blocks to suit the experience you’re looking to deliver.
11. Back-to-school, or back in style? (Photo Contest)
Hosting a photo contest presents a great opportunity to collect user-generated content (UGC) to promote your brand and increase its visibility. By encouraging your customers to participate and share content related to your brand, you can harness their creativity and enthusiasm to expand your reach and convert them into ambassadors for your business.
For a clothing brand, for example, launching a style contest 🛍️ where participants must share their back-to-school outfits including at least one of your products is an easily repeatable idea. You can offer a prize in the form of a gift card or even a hero piece from the new collection for the big winner(s).
12. 5-a-day: fruits and vegetables (Match 3)
After indulging a bit during the holidays, it’s time to get back to a more balanced routine! Why not organise a contest inspired by the popular Candy Crush game? But can the candies and go with the good stuff.
In this version, players find themselves in a world where candies are replaced by a variety of fruits and vegetables. Their goal? Match 3 or more identical fruits and/ or vegetables to clear them off their plate and score as many points as possible.
What brands would this work for? Sporting goods retailers, health food stores, or even gyms. If your brand believes that health is wealth and you want to make your customers millionaires, this game is a perfect promotion for the back-to-school period, when everyone is looking to set healthy habits.
The game mechanics are just like Candy Crush, but you can use the visual language of the game to reinforce some of the healthy choices your brand is all about, and go even further with intermediate screens and calls to action (CTAs) to promote your strategic pages.
Pro tip: Enable the leaderboard and use the native draw functionality to reward the 10 best players.
13. The ideal student starter pack (Memory Game)
The start of the university year is an exciting time for students, filled with new challenges, as well as the best supplies and products to help them meet those challenges head on.
The Memory Game is the perfect contest to engage, reward, and attract customers for your back-to-school campaign. With a simple yet effective mechanic, players must match pairs of cards that represent the ideal student starter pack, including all the essentials to kick off the year the right way (notebook, laptop, backpack, etc.).
At the end of the campaign, a draw will be held among the top players to determine the winner of the starter pack.
Expert advice
Back to school can be a jarring return to reality after the holidays, but it’s also a time of excitement and renewal, and gamification can help you make the most of that energy. Just like Christmas or Black Friday, back-to-school is a profitable time to engage your community through gamification and contests.
By adapting these back-to-school gamification ideas, you can captivate your audience’s attention, and make the most of this often under-utilised commercial time of year. 🎉
