By now, it’s no secret that email marketing is one of the most effective means of attracting customers. The reason for this is simple: everyone has at least one email address. you know what they all have too? a birthday!
Businesses large and small have used birthday email as a promotional tool for years and have seen impressive results year after year. Today, our goal is to explain why these birthday emails work so well, give some examples, and even talk about how to send automated birthday emails with ease.
why birthday emails are effective in marketing
The big question is: why do birthday emails work so well?
To be honest, there’s a lot of psychology behind it.
everyone wants to be celebrated. birthdays are exciting and only happen once a year. that’s your day, and it’s good to be in the center of everyone’s attention. including business. If done right, a good birthday email can turn a cold lead into a one-click conversion.
Okay, maybe a bit ambitious, but a birthday email can easily make the recipient happy, improving their relationship with that brand and increasing conversion potential.
how is this possible? well, let’s take a look at the birthday email stats.
- 481% increase in transaction rates
- 342% increase in email revenue
- 179% increase in unique clicks
- 53% increase in open rates
Based on these numbers alone, you can see how welcoming birthday emails are to users, even if they’re promotional. here’s why:
- Email marketing is all about making a good connection. What better way to make a personal connection with a customer than with a birthday email, showing that you know and care about them on a much more personal level?
- birthday emails provide the perfect context to send personalized and highly relevant messages. content to the user. again, this shows that you care about the customer on a higher level.
- showing that you care about your customers on a personal level like this increases your brand reputation, which helps guide those customers potential to become brand evangelists.
- birthday emails usually promote some coupon, especially made for the birthday. this increases engagement, sending the user back to your website where you will increase traffic and, ideally, sales.
- Birthdays apply to literally everyone. it’s not a certain demographic you’re targeting. is anyone who interacted with your brand.
With the stats and data above, it’s easy to see why you’d want to send birthday emails. however, manually emailing each customer on their birthday isn’t exactly practical. think of the big brands that have hundreds of thousands of customers. how do they send so many birthday emails? automate the process.
how to send automated birthday emails through gmail
While there are many tools out there to help you send birthday event triggered emails, there is also a way to do it through the most popular email platform on the planet, gmail. Here’s how to send automatic birthday emails in Gmail, broken down into simplified steps.
step 1. set up a spreadsheet
The first step is to compile a list of names, emails and birthdays in a google spreadsheet. It doesn’t have to be fancy, but it should look like this:
Step 2. Find an extension, or write your own formula
now, you need to find a google extension that automates this process. something like a mail merge. Alternatively, you can create some formulas within the google spreadsheet to help determine birthdays.
As you can see in the image above, each column has a specific name. this is to help the formula differentiate between each value. when the formula is executed, it will provide a new value to each user, essentially telling the script whether or not it is the user’s birthday.
step 3. create the script to send the email
To create a new script, you need to open the script editor window in the tools menu at the top of google sheets. once it’s open, create a new name for the new script. this can be whatever you want.
Now, copy and paste the following script into your project:
just a little disclaimer, this is not our script. was created on github. big credit to the author for figuring all this out.
now save the script and give it permission to run. Once it is saved, gmail will be given permission to send emails to those selected on your list.
Of course, this is all oversimplified for the sake of this article. there are actually many more steps and organization requirements to make this work smoothly. If you want to get the exact steps in detail, check out this guide on how to send automatic birthday emails with gmail.
even then, its function is minimal. I mean, imagine running something like this with hundreds or even thousands of clients. definitely not ideal for a business looking to get new conversions. so what is the easy way?
the easy way to send automated birthday emails
We’ve gone over the hard way, so now let’s talk about the easy way to send automatic birthday emails. the short answer is to find a tool that allows you to send automated emails based on an event trigger. in this case, a birthday. encharge does exactly that. let’s break it down.
with the annual/birthday trigger step, you will start a flow that can be based on any date field registered for a person (ie their date of birth). this will repeat every 12 months at the same date and time.
To configure this, you have 3 options:
- on : this will send the email at the exact date and time
- before: this will send the email a pre- certain amount of time before the birthday takes place. this could be days, business days or hours before.
- after : This is the same concept as the “before” option, it only takes place after the registered birthday.
Now, you’ll choose a date and time. in this case, encharge will only display the date and time fields. This is what it looks like.
Note that you first need to create the Birthday field as a date and time custom field in Encharge, and collect that data before you are able to send the birthday email.
once the annual/birthday trigger step is configured, you need to connect it to a send email action step in the flow like this:
And that’s it. Once this is set up, your message will be sent out to every user based on their birthday.
You can see how much simpler this process is than the previous one. while gmail may be a bit more accessible for some, it certainly doesn’t scale as easily. after a while, you’ll be covered in spreadsheet information, cross-referencing and possibly sending the wrong email to the wrong person.
encharge and similar tools help avoid that possibility. Rather than having to add names, emails, and birthdays to a spreadsheet and relying on a script to send the emails, encharge automates the entire process.
But that’s not all! we made it even easier for you. Click here or on the image below to copy the entire birthday automated email flow to your recharge account. this will copy the flow, email, and even the birthday custom field to your account.
What should a promotional birthday email include?
We’ve gone over the “why” and “how” of sending automated birthday emails, so now it’s time to talk about the “what” of the situation.
what should a promotional birthday email include?
That’s right, examples of promotional birthday emails will differ from company to company. but there are also many things that need to be included. let’s start from the top.
a unique birthday message
A birthday message won’t mean much if it’s a simple copy and paste. remember, people want to feel important and in the spotlight. The best way to do this is to wish them a very special birthday and use as many personal touches as you can, starting with their name. look at the following example.
Wine.com does a great job at personalizing the message as well as getting straight to the point. In this case, Kim gets an additional 10% on her next order, all for simply having a birthday.
a note of thanks for being part of the brand
A simple thank you can go a long way in any scenario. for a company that wants to sell something, it goes further. Along with the birthday message, a thank you note is also needed.
a special offer
What’s a birthday without a gift?
No, no need to go crazy here and offer them everything under the sun, but a little incentive is fine. remember, the idea is to get them to interact more with your company. if that means going to their main website, give them a coupon code. or you can take them to the store and redeem something for free in the hope that they will buy other things as well.
subway has the right idea in the image below.
Free cookie? Yes, please! But what is a cookie without a delicious sandwich to go along with it? Subway knows that as soon as the customer walks in the store to redeem that free cookie for their birthday, they’re going to want something else, too. In most cases, birthday emails encourage additional spending.
keep the message short
As much as it means to some customers to have a long drawn out message, it’s a bit of a stretch. thanking them for the support, wishing them a big happy birthday, and all sorts of heartfelt words isn’t exactly every customer’s cup of tea. the message should be short. look at this example.
Birchbox does a great job at immediately presenting the offer, wishing the customer a happy birthday, outlining the details, and then ending it. Right off the bat, the customer knows what this is all about, what they need to do, and they have the option to be taken right to the main website to redeem the $10 coupon. It’s as easy as that.
give the offer a time limit
Although a birthday is a time of celebration, that party lasts a short time. True, some people will be insecure for a few days, but the offer must have a sense of urgency. Hanging up an offer indefinitely won’t be enough to increase those conversion rates. at least, not to the level that they could be. look at this example.
Disney, one of the masters of marketing, offers some customers a coupon for 15% off when they shop online for their birthday. The email is short, to the point, bright, and colorful. But, it also imposes a time limit without being aggressive with it.
If you look closely, it says that during the month of September (in this case), you just have to enter the unique code for the discount. this means the customer has a full month to use this code, but after that, it’s gone forever. or at least until next year.
conclusions and conclusions
In conclusion, birthday emails for clients are vital. they are effective at converting, building brands, and simply making customers happy. And in case you missed it, let’s check out those crazy stats:
- 481% increase in transaction rates
- 342% increase in email revenue
- 179% increase in unique clicks
- 53% increase in open rates
Now think about these numbers, scaled up to meet each customer’s birthday. For many businesses, that means dozens, hundreds, or thousands of emails per day, automated and converting customers who might not otherwise. It’s such a simple strategy, but wow, does it make any difference?
If you’re not currently running a promotional birthday email campaign, now is the time to get started. With a tool like encharge, it takes literally seconds to set up, and you can even get started for free.