More Ways to Make Your Next Campaign Count: New Bandwango Features and Ideas to Try

During our recent holiday webinar, Bandwango CEO Mo Parikh shared a look at new platform enhancements and creative ways destinations can use them to drive visitation, reward engagement, and make campaign management easier. From a 12 Days of Christmas giveaway to new marketing tools, here are some ideas to inspire your next campaign.

Turn the Holidays Into a Daily Reason to Explore

What if your holiday campaign gave visitors a new reason to get out and explore every day?

Bandwango’s new giveaway capabilities make it possible to feature different local businesses on a set schedule and offer prizes to participating passholders. The program can be configured for hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly giveaways, with businesses and prizes selected as part of the campaign setup.

That opens the door to creative seasonal campaigns such as:

• 12 Days of Christmas: Feature a different local business each day for 12 days, with a prize or special offer to encourage visitors to stop in.
• 25 Days of Downtown: From December 1 through December 25, spotlight a different downtown business each day and give residents and visitors new places to discover.
• Holiday Shopping Giveaways: Encourage people to visit participating retailers, check in, and enter for a chance to win locally sourced prizes.
• Seasonal Restaurant and Beverage Features: Highlight restaurants, coffee shops, and beverage businesses with holiday-themed menu items, drinks, or experiences.
• A Month of Local Favorites: Build a campaign around the businesses, makers, and creators that make your destination unique, giving each one a dedicated day in the spotlight.

These campaigns are about more than giving away prizes. They create a reason to visit a business at a specific time, introduce people to places they may not have discovered otherwise, and keep local businesses part of the conversation throughout the season.

Give Visitors a Chance to Win When They Check In

One of the new giveaway experiences was already being used by South Lake Union, just south of Seattle. The program featured a different local business each day and encouraged passholders to check in for a chance to win a prize.

Winners were selected at random when they checked in, and they could see immediately whether they had won. If selected, they could claim their prize directly at the featured business.

The early results were encouraging. In its first 24 days, the South Lake Union program delivered more than 4,000 customers to local businesses, averaging approximately 175 customers per day, and distributed more than 280 prizes.

The feature gives destinations a new way to connect campaign participation with real-world visits. Rather than simply entering a drawing and waiting to hear back, visitors have an immediate incentive to engage; and a participating business gets the opportunity to welcome them in person.

During the webinar, Mo also shared that self-service setup for this giveaway feature was in development, with plans for customers to use it during the holiday season. Contact your Bandwango Customer Success representative to discuss availability and how it could fit into your campaign.

Make Your Campaign Feel Like an Experience, Not Just a Pass

A successful campaign starts with a clear idea. Instead of building a general pass with a little bit of everything, consider what would make someone excited to participate.

A few possibilities include:

The Peppermint Trail: Invite visitors to explore businesses offering holiday treats, peppermint-inspired products, or seasonal specials.

The Hot Chocolate Hop: Build a route around local coffee shops, cafés, and restaurants serving hot chocolate or other winter favorites.

A Holiday Window Decorating Passport: Invite local businesses to decorate their storefronts, then encourage visitors to explore the destination and see the displays.

A Holiday-Themed Food and Drink Pass: Work with restaurants and beverage businesses to create special seasonal menu items or branded drinks, then bring the offerings together in one pass.

A Holiday Giveaway Calendar: Pair a daily business feature with a prize, encouraging people to return to the pass throughout the campaign.

The webinar emphasized the importance of carrying a theme through the entire experience, from the pass name and graphics to the participating businesses, marketing, and prizes. A focused concept helps visitors quickly understand what the campaign is and gives them a compelling reason to take part.

Make Your Pass a Gift Worth Giving

Experiences can be memorable gifts, too. A pass can give someone an activity to enjoy with family, a day exploring local attractions, or an opportunity to discover new restaurants and shops.

Bandwango supports the ability to purchase a pass as a gift and schedule its delivery for the holiday itself. That creates an opportunity to market passes as experience-based gifts rather than only as something people purchase for themselves.

Consider promoting a pass as a gift for couples, families, food lovers, or anyone who would appreciate a new way to explore your destination. Even a free pass can become a meaningful gift when the experience is something people can enjoy together.

Spend Less Time Managing Marketing and More Time Promoting Your Campaign

Alongside the new giveaway capabilities, Mo shared several platform enhancements designed to make managing and promoting passes easier.

Self-service mobile pass advertising

Bandwango was preparing to introduce self-service management for mobile pass ads. The planned improvements included performance analytics directly on the ad page and the ability to schedule ads to appear or disappear on selected dates and times. These tools are designed to give destinations more control over campaign timing and visibility.

A refreshed email experience

The platform’s emails, including signup, purchase, gift, transfer, and messaging emails, were being overhauled with a cleaner interface designed to work better across email clients. The goal is a more consistent experience for passholders receiving communications from your organization.

Enhanced mobile pass navigation

Updates to mobile passes include refreshed place detail pages, clearer check-in and validation flows, and improved filtering and map functionality. Visitors can filter businesses by whether they are open now and by distance from their current location, making it easier to find places to visit while exploring.

AI-assisted marketing creative

Bandwango also previewed a marketing creative tool designed to help customers generate promotional content using context from their website and existing passes. The tool can draw on details such as pass names, participating businesses, and prizes to create captions and creative for different formats, including social media and print. Users can also provide reference imagery to help guide the output.

Together, these enhancements are intended to make it easier to manage campaigns, reach the right audience, and turn a pass into an experience people want to participate in. Availability varies by feature, so check with your Bandwango representative for the latest details.

Keep the Momentum Going Beyond the Holidays

These ideas don't have to end when the holiday season does. Daily business features, scheduled giveaways, themed passes, and experience-based gifts can all be adapted throughout the year.

Think about a spring shopping campaign, a summer dining series, a fall passport, or a special event that brings visitors into a specific neighborhood. The same approach can help destinations create timely reasons to explore while giving local businesses more opportunities to connect with customers.

Bandwango agreements often include unlimited passport builds, and many also include event ticketing. That means there may be opportunities to do more with the tools already available to your organization.

Ready to Try Something New?

Whether you're interested in a 12 Days of Christmas campaign, a giveaway that rewards visitors for checking in, or new ways to streamline pass marketing, Bandwango's evolving platform offers more possibilities for turning campaign ideas into real-world experiences.

Have an idea you want to bring to life? Connect with the Bandwango team.