Back to school season often comes with high expenses and, for many families, it’s a stressful time. That’s why offering your best-selling product as a prize can be a powerful incentive to drive participation in your contest. Keep in mind: while the prize is meant for school-age children, your true target audience is their parents and guardians. Choose a reward that genuinely appeals to students, but make sure it also resonates with adults as a smart, valuable gift for their kids: something practical that also helps them save money.
What type of Back to School contest should you launch? What’s in it for your brand? Keep reading! We’ve got creative Back to School contest ideas to help you engage your audience and boost your campaign results!
Back to School Photo Contest
After a long vacation, what do people have the most of? Great memories and lots of photos! That’s why one of our top Back to School contest ideas is to launch a photo contest where users can upload their favorite vacation snapshots. You’ll have full control to moderate entries before they go public, and you can customize your photo gallery layout: choose between a vertical view or a mosaic design. Enable voting to increase engagement and make your campaign more viral.
The photo contest app is also perfect for running drawing contests. Invite families to upload a drawing made by the little ones at home. This creates more meaningful engagement and encourages family participation. Keep in mind: the prize should be exciting and relevant, something that really motivates users to join in. With our photo contest tool, organizing this kind of competition is super simple: participants just snap a photo of the drawing and upload it through the registration form. Easy for them, effective for you!
If you want to boost reach and engagement, you can enable voting so participants get a personalized link to their entry, making it easy to share with friends and family and gather votes. More shares = more visibility for your brand! You can also select the contest winner through a random draw among all participants, making it fair and fun for everyone.
Another creative idea is to run a decorated photo contest for Back to School. Ask participants to upload a photo and then customize it with themed frames and stickers related to school life. Take a look at this Back to School photo contest demo with PhotoFun tool enabled. This option makes participation super easy and engaging: users can upload any photo and instantly personalize it using the frames and stickers provided by your brand. A fun, low-barrier way to connect with your audience while reinforcing your visual identity.
Try the Back to School Photo Contest DEMO with fun frames and stickers and, if you like what you see, go ahead and create your own branded version in just a few clicks!
The prize or incentive you offer is key to driving participation. If your goal is to raise brand awareness and encourage purchases, consider giving every participant a discount code just for entering. Then, raffle off a bigger prize among all participants, like a backpack and school supplies bundle.
Back to School Contest Based on Written Entries
If you want to keep participation simple for your audience, consider running a Back to School writing contest. Ask users to share their favorite memories or fun anecdotes from their school days. Participants can enter from any social media platform where you share the microsite URL. All entries will be published in a gallery where people can read, share, comment, and vote, depending on your settings. Creating a writing contest is super easy with the Easypromos Voting Contest app. You can also choose the winner through a random draw among all participants, making it fair and fun!
Do you like the idea of running a memory-sharing contest? Get inspired by this Literary story contest DEMO and, if you like it, make a copy to customize for your brand!
Back to School Contests with Instant Win Prizes
One of the best ways to boost participation in your Back to School campaign is to offer users the chance to win a guaranteed prize and, even better, to know instantly what their reward is.
At Easypromos, we offer multiple ways to grow your business through interactive experiences with instant-win prizes. Today, we want to highlight one of our most successful formats: the digital Scratch & Win. This dynamic game transforms every interaction into an opportunity to strengthen your branding in a fun, memorable, and effective way.
The well-known toy and educational supplies brand, Eurekakids, launched an exclusive digital scratch and win campaign for their customers. The prize? Free school supplies! A simple yet powerful initiative that boosted customer loyalty, drove traffic to both stores and their website, and strengthened their positioning as a friendly, educational brand.
Back to School Skill-Based Contests
Another type of contest invites participants to showcase their skills by playing games. This approach focuses on driving user interaction through campaign gamification. With Easypromos, you can create fully customized interactive games and puzzles featuring your brand’s unique identity. Check out these examples of Back to School games you can set up easily. No programming required!
For example, you can launch a branded memory game as part of your Back to School campaign. Invite your followers to find matching pairs in the game, then complete a registration form for a chance to win a prize or a discount code. Contests with a final prize attract more participants and, when shared on social media, help capture the attention of potential new customers.
You can also launch a word search game featuring Back to School related words. For example, invite your followers to find hidden names of school subjects or your brand’s products for kids.
No matter which game you choose, the results will be outstanding! You’ll entertain your audience, boost brand awareness, increase sales, grow your email list, and strengthen customer loyalty.
Want more school marketing ideas to boost your brand’s visibility? Check out the article to discover them all!
Back to School Quiz Contest
Another idea is to take advantage of the fact that parents are gearing up their kids for school by asking them about their habits, needs, or preferences through a survey. As a reward, enter them into a raffle to win the most requested products for their children or discounts to redeem in your store. You can create a dynamic questionnaire with photos, texts, and videos to learn when and where your customers buy your products, what they value most, and more.
You can also create a Knowledge quiz, like in this example from Pritt. The goal is to boost brand recall for this popular school product—a glue stick. The brand crafted fun content for kids and teens and designed a question that participants can answer by visiting their social media pages. This strategy drives traffic to their social profiles and makes participation more fun and unique.
All set for Back to School? Start planning your campaign now and boost engagement with your audience before the new school year kicks off! And remember, if you have any questions about the Back to School contests we’ve shared, feel free to reach out to our customer support team.
