Last-Minute Holiday Marketing Ideas to Promote Brand Awareness

Updated: October 28, 2026

The end of the year is just around the corner. That means there’s still a little bit of time for one last holiday-marketing push before the new year. Take this last chance to get in front of your customers during 2023 to promote brand awareness and customer engagement -- two keys to sales success that’ll be a boon for your business in 2024. Both goals can be met using any one of this week’s featured campaigns: a Personality Quiz and Giveaway, a Recipe Contest or a Photo Contest. Better yet, all of these last-minute holiday marketing ideas can be created fast using our templates.

How fast is fast? If you launch in the first week of December, you can still run a two-week campaign and announce your winners before the holidays. Keep the entry period short, keep the entry steps simple, and choose a prize you can deliver quickly – a gift card, a digital download or a discount code – rather than something that has to ship during the busiest week of the year.

But just wait a minute. You might be wondering what exactly you do with the information you’ve collected after the holidays are over. To help answer that question, I’ve included three ideas for building off your holiday marketing momentum in the new year using email marketing automation.

Jarlsberg’s “What Kind of Dinner Party Host are You?” Holiday Quiz Giveaway

A personality quiz can be a way for you to both engage with your customers and learn what they actually want. The Jarlsberg “What Kind of Dinner Party Host are You?” quiz is a model every marketer should follow. Almost every question includes at least one recipe featuring a Jarlsberg product as a potential answer (hello, Jarlsberg Croquettes!). After answering all of the questions, folks can enter their information to win a prize. Plus, they’re given a chance to find the recipes for all of those tasty Jarlsberg dishes featured in the quiz.

Here’s the best part: every answer tells you something about the person who gave it. In a quiz like this, someone whose results say they’re a cozy comfort-food host and someone who’s more of a fancy cocktail-party host probably want to hear about different products. Use those results to sort your new contacts into groups, then send each group emails that match their tastes in the new year.

TIP: Our Personality Quiz template includes a helpful wizard that allows you to set up the quiz quickly. Plus, the form will collect and store all of the quiz answers each user chooses, so the segmenting is done for you.

View this Example

Start your own Personality Quiz

Orrington Farms Favorite Holiday Recipe Contest

Food is a major focus of the holidays, which is one reason Orrington Farms created a clever campaign to encourage folks to make their products part of their festivities. To enter the recipe contest, entrants submit holiday recipes featuring Orrington Farms products. People are encouraged to share their entries to gain votes. This contest is a fun way to promote products and engage customers. Not only that, but it boosts brand awareness. If someone visits the campaign to vote and finds a recipe they want to try that features an Orrington Farms product, they’ll need to pick up that product in order to cook the recipe.

TIP: Voting contests can get competitive, so set some ground rules. Limit votes to one per person per day, and consider having a panel of judges pick the winner from the top vote-getters. And while you can absolutely encourage entrants to share their recipes, don’t make sharing a requirement to enter – some social platforms, Facebook included, don’t allow it.

IDEA: Use our Marketing Automation features to send special-offer coupons to folks who submit entries to your contest. That way, your product is already in their kitchen when it’s time to cook.

View this Example

Start your own Recipe Contest

Perky-Pet’s Holiday Decorating Photo Contest

People put a lot of work into their holiday decorations. Encouraging them to take photos of their handiwork, especially if the decor is relevant to your brand, adds a bit of excitement to your contest. The Perky-Pet photo contest doesn’t choose winners according to which photo receives the most votes. Instead, photos are just a requirement for entry. This challenges entrants to spend a bit more time thinking about your brand when entering than they might when simply filling out a form with their name and email.

Plus, you can collect some user-generated content (UGC) to use in your own marketing. Just be sure to ask for permission the right way: spell out in your official rules exactly how you might use the photos (on your website, social media or in ads), and add a checkbox to your entry form so entrants can agree. And if people show up in the photos – especially kids – make sure the person entering has permission to share them.

View this Example

Start your own Photo Contest

How to use Marketing Automation to build momentum from your holiday marketing success

Our marketing automation feature is a powerful tool to help keep in touch with customers long after they have submitted their information to your list. Below are three goal-driven email marketing ideas for your ShortStack lists.

1. New year goal: drive sales

A few weeks after the holiday festivities have concluded, send people who signed up for your lists a discount code for your store. After all, they have gift cards and holiday gift money to use up, so give them an incentive to make your business a stop on their shopping trip. Along with the discount code, use the email to introduce shoppers to new products you’ve added since the holidays that might not have been on their wish lists a few weeks earlier. If you ran a quiz, use each person’s results to feature the products that match their tastes.

2. New year goal: promote a new product

Have a new product launching in the new year? Be sure to leverage those emails you collected during the holidays! Send an email announcing the imminent arrival of your new product. Include a mention of a few of the benefits of the product. You could even create a ShortStack campaign announcing the product and include links in your email to the campaign where users can learn more. If you have free samples, consider offering those samples to folks on your list in exchange for honest feedback. (If you plan to publish their reviews, make sure the reviewers disclose that they received a free product.)

3. New year goal: encourage customer engagement

Customer engagement can lead to brand loyalty and customer retention, both of which are important to driving sales. It also helps people connect personally with your brand. As we know, contests can be great for facilitating customer engagement, and marketing automation is a perfect way to promote your contests. A few days before your next contest launches, let folks on your list know that it’s coming up. Give them a sneak peek at the prizes, or let them know what they need to do to enter (e.g., create a video, post a selfie, etc.). Then, a few days into the contest, send a follow-up email to make sure those who are interested have submitted their entries.

Ready for one last holiday push?

There’s still time to make a big impression before the year wraps up. Pick the campaign that fits your brand, launch it fast, and let your new contacts carry your momentum into the new year.

Looking for more inspiration? Check out our holiday marketing ideas, our guide to the best holiday contest prizes, and our December contest ideas.

Want to learn more about our Marketing Automation feature? We offer helpful support documentation and videos. If you still have questions, feel free to contact our support team.

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