When it comes to automated campaigns, there are a few essentials you need, and a celebratory campaign should be one.

 
So, what is a birthday email? It’s an automated email campaign that’s automatically sent to a customer either on their birthday or in the lead up to their big day from a marketing automation platform. It’s a great campaign for retention, especially as your customer will most likely have some extra spending money available.
 

Why send birthday and anniversary emails?

 
Birthdays, anniversaries and other milestones offer an opportunity to connect with your audience, maximising the touchpoints across the customer lifecycle. It’s an opportunity to get your brand in front of your audience, offering a reason to celebrate.
 
What’s more, birthday emails are amongst the highest emails for engagement and conversions with one of our clients allbeauty seeing unique click rates in excess of 5% and conversion rates over 7%!

Send more than just a birthday email once a year – Milestones to celebrate!

 
If you’re wondering how you can celebrate with you audience, consider implementing the following automated emails:

• Birthday
• Half birthday (yes, really!)
• Anniversary of sign up
• Anniversary of 1st purchase

 
If you offer products and services to children or fury friends, this is another great opportunity to celebrate the milestones of loved ones of your target audience.
 
Capture this information during account registration or sign up or incentivise data sharing through a competition microsite.

Things to consider when sending the perfect Birthday Email campaign

 
If including a discount or reward in a Birthday email, consider sending two weeks prior to the date so your customer gets chance to treat themselves ahead of the celebrations.
 
Celebrating a birthday month allows plenty of opportunity to engage with your customer via a multi-stage birthday campaign. Celebrate the start of ‘birthday month’ followed by an email on their actual birthday.
 
If customers don’t engage or convert using their incentive, consider sending a post-birthday email as a last chance to claim that birthday treat.
 
Ensuring the validity of any offers or rewards are available long enough for your customer to enjoy will maximise conversions.
 
Make this clear on the email rather than hiding it in the terms and conditions. When offering an incentive, be mindful of any offers live on the website at that time to avoid the birthday treat losing its exclusivity.
 
You can manage this by offering an additional discount or reward on top of any existing offers available.
 

“Birthday and Anniversary emails are useful in ‘humanising’ our brand and showing our customers that we appreciate them. They nurture and strengthen customer relationships by giving them something free on their birthday or anniversary and helps increase our retention by driving the customer back to our site.”
 
“allbeauty offer a 10% site wide discount code without any spend requirements so this offer stands out as being unique and generous compared to standard offers and that, combined with the other factors, means the programme is very successful for us”

Katrina Wiggins, Senior Retention Manager at allbeauty

Make sure your birthday email stands out from the crowded inbox

 
Birthday and anniversary emails are popular amongst marketers to engage with audiences, so it won’t be a surprise that you’ll be competing for attention in the inbox. Make sure you stand out from the crowd by implementing the following tactics:
 

• Create a compelling and engaging subject line. Have fun with a playful tone of voice and even use emojis if appropriate for your brand
• Offer a reward, such as a discount or free gift
• Optimise the preview line to hint that a birthday surprise awaits inside the email so that your customers don’t miss out
• Personalise the content by utilising customer data e.g., displaying recommended products or trips based on purchase history. For anniversary emails, playback the customer achievements in the past year e.g., miles flown, trips taken, countries visited, or purchases made.
• Be playful with your copy and images, using gifs and animations to add to the celebratory messaging

 
Importantly, remember that this special milestone is all about your customer, so keep it light-hearted and fun.
 

Why RedEye is great for this type of campaign

 
We recommend automating your birthday and anniversary campaigns, so they run like clockwork all year round.
 
RedEye’s segmentation tool allows you to create milestone segments, which will recalculate daily and send the relevant email campaign to those who fit the segment criteria.
 
Multi-stage and multi-channel campaigns can be set-up within RedEye’s Campaign Management tool, allowing you to seamless create journeys designed to celebrate and delight your audience.
 
 

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