Spine-Tingling Halloween sales contest ideas to Boost Sales

Corinna Keefe
Corinna Keefe
Halloween is now worth more than nine billion dollars each year. Consumers are spending more money than ever on Halloween costumes, candy, decorations, and events. So you can't afford to miss out! Learn how to get leads and increase revenue with these Halloween coupon ideas, promotions and contests.

Four big holidays dominate the sales calendar in the second half of the year: Halloween, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the Christmas season. If you can start with an effective Halloween promotion, you’ll be set up for the rest of the season! Let’s take a look at four Halloween sales ideas to get you started – plus some tips to make your Halloween marketing ideas even more effective.

Define your Halloween sales goals

The first step is defining your goals. What do you want to achieve with your Halloween sales contest?

  • If you want to increase followers and engagement, start with Halloween social media giveaways.
  • To build an active online community, try Halloween contests such as photo competitions and hashtag contests.
  • If you want to get leads and increase sales, then you should focus on games, quizzes, recruitment, and rewards. And this is what we focus on today.

In the sections below, we explain our favorite Halloween sales contest ideas in more detail.

halloween promotions


Use games to distribute Halloween coupons and discounts and increase sales

Offering discounts codes and vouchers is surely the best way to increase sales, as users are always attracted by special offers and bargains. But you can add a twist to that by creating a sense of urgency to nudge immediate purchases. How? By configuring your coupons to have a countdown timer to redeem them. And one-day campaigns like Halloween are the perfect fit for these sort of action. The best news is that with Easypromos you can do just that!

Take a look at this example of a Halloween Memory game. Each participant that completed the game was invited to fill out a registration form to download a Halloween coupon for a 10% discount for their costume shopping. The coupon then shows a countdown showing participants how much time they have left to redeem their coupon.

Halloween  sales idea: Memory Game

Is your aim to increase brand visibility to its maximum? Apart from giving away discounts and vouchers, enter all registered users into a random prize draw for a grand prize. Registered participants will be more likely to share your promotion with their family and friends, which will result in more leads and sales for your brand.

Increase Halloween sales with a Spin the Wheel promotion to share discounts

Online users love interactive content – and they also love rewards and prizes. How does combining the two sound?

You can now increase sales during the Halloween period with an interactive prize wheel customized with your logo and corporate colors or images. By inviting users to spin the wheel you work on a variety of different marketing objectives, sales, lead generation and engagement among others but most importantly, your provide participants with positive experiences, which is vital for brand advocacy and loyalty.

Halloween sales ideas: Spin the wheel promotion

Take a look at the above promotion to see a great example of a Halloween sales Spin the Wheel promotion. Use it to give away Halloween coupons and vouchers that will help you stay top of mind with clients and drive them to your shop during Halloween – in an untraditional and interactive way! The participants are more likely to visit your store – and spend some money – if they have a discount coupon, especially if has to be redeemed within a certain timeframe. At the same time, your database will benefit from all the new email addresses that users leave in order to participate in your promotion.

Sounds like fun? Try this Halloween Prize Wheel DEMO to get a feel of the user experience for yourself.

Halloween sales contest ideas: the creepy quiz

Quizzes are quick, fun, and easy for consumers. Ask some hair-raising Halloween questions – then run a prize draw for everyone who participates. If you want to make the promotion more exclusive, you can limit the prize draw to people who get all the answers right.

Customize the registration form to get the lead info you need, from email addresses to location and even shopping habits. Once the promotion is over, feed all that information back into your CRM, and follow up with participants who seem like good sales prospects. However, don’t ask for too much information, as every registration form field is a new participation barrier.

halloween sales ideas

You can also use quizzes to boost sales more directly. Ask questions about your products and services, to educate consumers about your brand. Remember to offer a prize that’s in proportion to the difficulty of the quiz. If you ask more than three or four questions, then you’ll need a generous reward!

Building a Halloween quiz is easier than you think! Try the Halloween Quiz DEMO – then copy the template for an instant Halloween promotion.

Halloween sales contest ideas: the spooky survey

Just like quizzes, you can create a survey to celebrate Halloween and educate consumers.

But since a survey is based on customer opinions, you can also learn more about their shopping habits, preferences, and motivations. Ask your followers where they like to shop, their favorite thing about Halloween, their costume ideas for this year… The possibilities are endless!

Screenshot of a Halloween sales survey. Participants can win $500 worth of Halloween prizes when they answer survey questions and design their own "spooky bucket" full of goodies.

Here’s a great example from Walmart. They ran a survey with a creative twist. Instead of asking formal questions, they asked customers to fill a bucket with their choice of candy.

This was a great way to inform customers about products available and learn which products they liked best. In return, participants could win a $500 pack of Halloween treats.


Reward your customers’ purchases with exclusive Halloween sales rewards

Halloween is that kind of holiday that concentrates all related purchases in a few days, giving you the opportunity to reward your customers for shopping with you. And is doing so, increase your shop’s average purchase value. A loyalty building promotion like this is much easier to set up, launch, and manage than you might think using the Validate Receipts app.

Validate Receipts DEMO

The concept is quite simple, once customers have reached a certain amount spent on your shop, or even several participating shops, they receive a reward. It is up to you what such reward would be: a prize, a discount, a credit voucher, etc. And that’s not all, you can set up the promotion so that the rewards get better the more customers spend. And here’s where the Hocus-Pocus happens, to validate their purchases, customers simply have to access the promotion and scan their purchase receipts. The Validate Receipts app will automatically validate the receipt according to the parameters that you have previously set. Eg. minimum amount spent, name of the shop, preset code, etc.


Last 5 quick tips to increase Halloween sales

  • Optimize your promotion for mobile users. Increasingly, consumers use mobiles and tablets to research purchases and search online. Make sure your quiz, survey, or contest looks good on a range of devices.
  • Set up your promotion a few weeks in advance. When do you start planning your Halloween costume? If you want to increase sales on Halloween, your campaign should actually be up and running for a few weeks before Halloween.
  • Tailor prizes to your target audience. Choose competition prizes that showcase your brand and are relevant to Halloween. They should be attractive to customers, but still in proportion to the contest.
  • Coordinate your branding with the Halloween theme. Use the Easypromos design tools to make your promotion look smart, on-brand… and spooky!
  • Share on social media. Spread the word about your Halloween-themed contests on all your social networks, as well as your website and email newsletter.

We hope these Halloween sales contest ideas have helped you visualize your Halloween campaign! In case of any doubts or questions make sure you contact our Support Team! They’re always ready to provide help and assistance!