The top 30 ideas to help you drive revenue and engagement in 2025, 2026, and beyond!
In our 16th annual 30in30, we sourced 90+ ideas to provide you with quick, winning ideas make 2026 your best year yet. These ideas will help you create a plan to increase your revenue, grow your database, develop a deeper level of audience engagement, or a combination of all three!
Whether you’re looking for new ways to improve an existing contest program or your company is just getting started with promotions, we’re giving you a calendar years’ worth of ideas!
National Sweepstakes
If the National Sweepstakes isn’t part of your promotion plan, add it now! You can use national sweepsakes as a list builder, to drive data growth, boost revenue – you choose! These are promotions with huge prizes that you can completely customize for both your company and your advertisers goals with multiple sponsorship opportunities.
They are free for you to use and customize them to curate a bespoke promotion for your advertiser! Check out our 2026 National Sweepstakes Kit to learn more!
Current Initiatives
You’re already investing resources in your current initiatives. How do we grow those initiatives? Generate more engagement around those initiatives? Drive more revenue around those initiatives? You guessed it – promotions! They provide a digital experience for your audience that they can interact with AND provides exposure for advertisers, lead generation, and database growth opportunities
Examples of current initiatives could be Sports, Weather, Special Sections, Programming, Content Marketing, etc.
Revenue Power Plays
How can you drive more revenue with less lift for your team? By utilizing recurring revenue or annual promotions. They bring in that big money and fill your advertiser funnel throughout the year with less strain on your team.
Check out our complete guide to recurring revenue for more on recurring campaigns! And of course we can’t leave out the largest revenue driver of the year – your Best Of Ballot. Take your next Best Of one step further to drive that year-round revenue!
Lead Generating Campaigns
Lead Generating campaigns provide proven value to all advertisers. Like any business, they need a full funnel of leads, and promotions are a proven way to provide them with real and plentiful leads. These campaigns are customizable to fit your advertisers’ needs and drive the measurable results they are looking for!
Audience Data
Gathering opt-ins will always be an important initiative, another huge area of focus should be on gathering data. Once you know WHO your audience is and what they CARE about, then can maximize that data and engage with them more effectively! Your advertisers also need this type of data to better target leads and evolve their marketing strategies, so make sure you are continuously collecting data!
Need more ideas?
Our playbook 537 Ideas to Engage Your Audience is your ultimate planning guide and idea bank to both promotions and email. Utilize over 500 ideas to for your 2026 calendar.
Related Articles
Julie is the Senior Customer Success Manager at Second Street and a former client in local media. Her best advice for driving the most success with your revenue and audience engagement strategy is to include promotions in every business initiative.