Want to boost activation in the run up to the holidays? Why not try setting up a holiday calendar? This is a fantastic way to engage your contacts and has proven to be a fun and easy way to boost activation.
We have created some cool Holiday Calendar graphical designs with and without gif animation - easy for you to download and start building your Holiday Calendar.
Let's get started!
In this guide we will build a 24 day Christmas Calendar. This is the most advanced type of holiday calendar, but you can of course create a holiday calendar with exactly how many hatches you want - 24 days, all weekdays in december, 1 per week etc. It is all up to you!
You will need to create a frontpage for the whole calendar, and a landing page for each day.
Follow these four steps below to create your calendar in Actimo:
Step 1: Create a landing page for the Holiday Calendar frontpage
Step 2: Prepare the daily messages
Step 3: Create the navigation from the Holiday Calendar frontpage to the daily messages
Step 1:
Create a landing page for the Holiday Calendar Frontpage
The first thing that you need to do is to create a landing page with a grid for the whole calendar.
Create a message and add a grid module with 3 tiles per row and add 24 tiles
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Create a graphic to use as a background for the entire grid that includes a tile for each day. Please note the following dimensions:
24 tiles: 600 x 1600 px
4 tiles: 600 x 600 px
Upload the graphic as a background Image for the entire grid. You can include numbers on each tile in the background image itself, or exclude them and add the numbers as titles in the grid instead.
If you have uploaded a background image with no numbers, name the tiles “8”, “14”, “1” etc. until you have named all 24 tiles:
Click save
Add a grid module with 3 tiles per row and add 24 tiles, and upload background image for the module:
Examples of 24 day calendar design - incl. header image (the header image is added as a separate image module above the grid module):
Examples of 4 day calendar design:
Step 2:
Prepare the daily messages
The three key steps to creating the daily messages for the holiday calendar in are:
2.1 Create a landing page for each day – Prepare the messages for each day
2.2 Enable linked access – Ensure linked access is enabled on each daily message to prevent access before the scheduled date
2.3 Schedule the publish of the daily messages – Set the messages to be published on their specific dates, so they unlock automatically for your employees
2.1 Create a landing page for each day
Create a message and add content for each day of the calendar.
The idea is to keep the content light and fun, but you can also make it informative.
Here are some ideas for content:
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Involve colleagues/management
Greetings from management, departments, locations etc.
Dress someone well known up as Santa - guess who it is
Videoclip with colleagues saying "Merry Christmas" - count the number of "Merry Christmas"
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Christmas music & movies
Co-create the Christmas music playlist for the Christmas Party
Co-create Top 10 list of Christmas movies
Quizzes about Christmas music and movies
24 day Christmas music quiz - play a bit of a song and answer a question
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Christmas jokes & riddles
Tell funny Christmas jokes
Ask funny Christmas riddles (add the question on page 1 and the answer on page 2)
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National days
December 13th - Sct. Lucy's Day - quiz about Sct. Lucy's day or share image of Sct. Lucy's celebration on social
Third Friday in December - National Ugly Sweater Day - share selfie with ugly Christmas Sweater on social
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Quizzes in general
Company themed
News themed (published in app during the last year)
Holiday themed
Locally themed
Common trivia
Christmas music & movies
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Share on social
Tik tok challenges
Social wall Holiday Greeting
Build a snowman
Share your favorite Christmas recipe
What is the worst Christmas gift you have ever received
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Christmas treasure hunt
Find the hidden Christmas tree 🎄, Santa 🎅🏻 etc.
Holiday Calendar content tips & tricks
Create fun and engaging content
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Use images/gifs/emojis
Find emojis on http://giphy.com
Activate social feature (likes & comments) om messages
Use social wall
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Use points and quizzes and reward with prizes
Weekly draw and/or find an overall winner of the Holiday Calendar
2.2 Enable linked access
Ensure 'Enable linked access' is disabled on each message to prevent access before the scheduled date.
Navigate to the daily message
Navigate to the Publish page of the message
Open 'Advanced access'
Toggle off 'Enable linked access'
Open advanced access and toggle off "Enable linked access"
Disabling Linked access ensures the message won't be accessible before the scheduled date. If an employee clicks on one of the tiles linked from the landing page (the guidelines on how to link each message to the tiles are below in the article), and the message isn't yet available, they will see a 'No access. You don't have access to this page' message.
2.3 Schedule the daily messages
It’s important to note that the daily messages needs to be unlocked each day. You can unlock the daily messages automatically by scheduling the publish in advance for the specific dates.
Navigate to the daily message
Navigate to the Publish page of the message
Add the contacts to whom the message should be published
Scroll down and select 'Schedule For Later'
Set the message to be published on the specific date it should become available to the contacts
Leave the notification methods unticked
Click on 'Schedule for Later' > 'Confirm'
The content will be queued and published on the specified date - and as soon as the message is published, then it is accessable for the contacts
Step 3:
Create the navigation from the Holiday Calendar frontpage to the daily messages
Now that the Holiday Calendar front page and the daily messages are set up, we can connect it all together.
Navigate to Holiday Calendar landingpage
Edit the Grid Module
Find the tile for the first day of the calendar (if you have chosen a background image that includes numbers, you will need to count the tiles from left to right to find the correct tile).
Click on the tool icon
Add an action
Select Go to Message
Select the message for specific date
Repeat for all the tiles
Click Save
Congratulations! You have now set up your holiday calendar 🎄🎅🏻🎉
Graphical design for your Holiday Calendar
We have created some cool graphical designs for your holiday calendar - easy to download and add to your calendar.
Content for your Holiday Calendar
We know that it takes a lot of resources to build a Holiday Calendar - but we don't think that this should stop you from creating a fun and engaging Holiday Calendar for your employees.
Find inspiration for Holiday Calendar content in the pdf below ⤵️ or in our "Holiday Calendar Content" article here.
You can also find inspiration for content in the handout from our Holiday Special Training Webinar in November 7th 2024 ⤵️
Merry Christmas 🎄🎅🏻💫