Back to School Campaign Ideas to Boost Sales Online and In-Store in 2023

The Back to School campaign is a tradition almost as old as school itself. Students always need new backpacks, uniforms, stationery, supplies, and more! So, if you’re looking for some Back to School campaign ideas, you’ve come to the right place!

Back to School purchases are now worth more than 30 billion dollars in the US alone. But the way we shop has changed and customers are more likely to look for what they need on search engines than on your brand website.

So you need to make sure your brand, products, and services achieve viral success with effective Back to School campaign ideas. Try these 7 powerful apps:

Back to School games: entertain and engage your customers

If you have been keeping up with the trends, you know that gamification is the name of he game. Many brands turn to playable promotions as they have the power to entertain and engage online communities. Launching a gamified campaign as part of your Back to School campaign is definitely a good idea to showcase your products, boost sales, and collect new contact details. Mini-games also reinforce brand awareness and recall, and since they’re fully customizable you can can personalize them with your corporate image.

Above you can see an example of a Back to School Memory game that can be launched as part of your Back to School campaign. Simply invite your social media followers to find matching pairs of your products and then fill in a registration form for a chance to win a prize or a discount code. Incentivized promotions attract more participants, and by sharing them on your social media channels you get to convert social media followers into qualified leads.

Not convinced by the Memory game? How about a Back to School puzzle? Ask your followers to unscramble the image of your product and then raffle Back to School prizes like in the previous example.

No matter the game application, the final results will be outstanding! Entertainment, increased engagement, boosted sales, expanded mailing list, and reinforced brand awareness and customer loyalty. What else can one ask for?

Here’s another great example of how to generate engagement and visibility for your brand with your Back to School campaign. Take a look at this game from a food brand.

This Slide & Match game is a customizable version of a popular mobile app. Brands can upload images and icons of their choice and ask users to match icons of their products or logos. By engaging your audience with such a fun dynamic, you stay top of mind with customers and you also get to generate positive brand perceptions.

Back to School contest ideas to show off skills and collect user-generated content: Photo Contest

Most people return from vacation excited to show off all their photos of beautiful places, fun activities, and family time. And according to statistics, more than 75% of mothers create or curate online content every month!

One of our most popular Back to School campaign ideas is a Photo Contest. Give your users the chance to contribute to your brand, and they’ll receive a prize in exchange.

Create an online gallery where participants can upload and share their summer memories. You can choose between a vertical or mosaic layout to achieve the best effect. The photo contest tool also helps you to pre-moderate entries. Activate the Easypromos voting system and use sharing features to increase your viral reach.

All you have to do is choose a suitable prize and award it to the winners! You could give away Back to School essentials such as backpacks, bookbags, or stationery. Another option is to share discounts for more expensive items such as laptops and clothes. If you want to distribute discounts, then coupons and codes are your best option.

Create memories with first-day-of-school photos

If you’re on social media, you’ve probably seen parents sharing cute photos of their kids on the first day of school. Those tiny uniforms! Those enormous backpacks! You can tap into that user behavior to run Back to School promotions, too.

With the PhotoFun app, you give people the tools to create postcards and photo memories at the start of a new school year. Users just upload a photo, then decorate it with cute school-themed frames and stickers in the virtual photobooth:

Then you can offer a coupon reward for every photo creation, or ask people to vote for a favorite to receive a grand prize. Apart from collecting user-generated content you also generate new leads and strengthen customer relationships.

Back to School contest ideas: Share memories or news with a Writing Contest

Another way for followers to share their Back to School news or summer memories is through a Writing Contest using the Voting Contest app. Ask them to describe the best day of the summer, an ideal holiday, or whatever else inspires you! Your brand’s fans can participate on Facebook. All the entries will be collected together and published in a dedicated competition gallery. Then users can read, share, comment, and vote for their favorite texts.

Voting is really popular with followers, and a good way to show the community that you value their opinion. You can choose whether you want to select the winners of the giveaway based on votes, the decision of a jury, or a random prize draw.

Would you like to celebrate the Back to School season with a coupon campaign? Try this Back to school demo to distribute coupon codes to get a feel of the user-experience.

Highlight your Back to School campaign with #Hashtags

Hashtag contests are an easy, flexible option that followers love. Your brand’s fans can participate from any social network. All they have to do is share content with the hashtag you’ve picked out for your Back to School campaign and mention your brand.

Start by choosing a good hashtag. You can read our tips on designing a powerful, viral hashtag here. Then your customers can participate with the content of their choice. Family photos at the beach, their favorite song of the summer, videos of holiday adventures, drawings done by kids on vacation… the possibilities are endless!

Try to keep contest restrictions to a minimum. Give users the chance to win a Back to School haul by sharing anything that speaks to them personally.

You can import all content with your hashtag to a public gallery. But it’s up to you if you want to import everything or specific types of content. For example, you can choose whether to import all entries from Twitter, or just Tweets that include a photo or video. On Instagram, you can choose whether to import photos only, videos only, or both.

You can embed the gallery on any website or blog using a widget, and present it as an application on your Facebook page.

In the example above, the brand organized a contest with the hashtag #HoopSchool. Followers could enter with tweets, photos, and videos to win the prize.

Educate and entertain your audience with a Back to School Quiz Contest

Your Back to School campaign isn’t just an opportunity to increase followers and sales right now. Seize the moment and carry out market research or inform your audience about new products.

Check how well your audience knows your products, the history of your brand, or even languages! You can do it with an interactive Back to School Knowledge Quiz that you can easily launch with Easypromos.

You can offer discounts in-store or online, too. This incentivizes parents to take your quiz and answer your Back to School questions.  Make the quiz dynamic, creative, and colorful. And the latest update to Easypromos Premium includes an upgraded design toolkit to give the campaign an extra-fresh look!

Increase your reach with a Refer a Friend app

The Refer a Friend contest app is designed to help you grow your audience and reach more followers. In this type of giveaway, your followers have a better chance of winning the prize if they invite their friends to take part too.

This is a great way to grow your base of followers through organic, real-life connections. In the example below, a brand is offering a Disney gift card as the prize for a recruiters contest. The brand’s followers are motivated to share with their friends, and the prize is targeted towards children and families.

Do you want to boost social media engagement as part of your Back to School campaign? Discover engaging ideas for Back to School social media giveaways.

All ready for the start of the new school year? We hope our Back to School inspiration helps! Remember, it’s free to create your account and draft promotions. And in case of questions and doubts, Online Chat with us!