Birthday emails are perfect for strengthening customer loyalty and reminding your contacts that you're thankful for their business. Additionally, it's clear that personalized messaging like this resonates with people as various studies, including one from Shopify, have shown that birthday emails have a higher conversion rate than typical email campaigns.

Best Practices

Before creating a birthday email, there are some guidelines you should consider to ensure that your messaging will resonate with your contacts.

 

You should, when possible, attempt to:

• Personalize the email. Use your customer's name in your headline and/or body content. For example, "Happy birthday, Robert!" However, don't over-saturate the email with their information and try to avoid possibly sensitive topics like the contact's age. 
• Offer a birthday gift. Use coupon codes to offer a discount, a free product, or some other store credit. It's not worth sending a birthday email if you're not going to offer anything. Just remember that this is meant to be a genuine gift that shows customer appreciation. It's okay to highlight products that fit the customer's interest but make sure to avoid pushing a sale.
• Pay attention to the call to action. Most emails will benefit from having an explicit call to action. Consider experimenting with out-of-the-ordinary copy emphasizing the uniqueness of the day like "Redeem your birthday gift," "Yes! I want my birthday deal," or "Get the party started." Make sure yours sticks out.

Collect birthday information

A contact's birthday data is something that they must share with you, so you will need to ask for this information during a display's signup. If you are sending the birthday email with Privy email, please follow these steps. If you are sending the birthday email via a linked third-party email service provider (e.g., Mailchimp), please follow these steps. 

Collect birthday data for Privy emails

Currently, birthday emails sent via Privy must be triggered on a monthly basis using the Campaigns tool. The email is sent using a custom segment based on a contact's birthday month. To collect this information, you must:

• Create a custom field (e.g., Birthday Month) by following these steps. 
• Add the custom field to a display by following these steps. 

 

Completing these steps will allow you to collect the required birthday information from contacts. 

Collect birthday data for other ESPs

Most linked third-party providers send birthday emails based on birthday data collected in a particular format (e.g., MM/DD/YYY or YYY-MM-DD). The provider then uses that information to send the email at a particular interval, such as yearly on the contact's birthday. In most cases, you can use Privy's default "Birthday" field to collect and share this information with your linked account. To collect this information with Privy and share it with your provider: 

• Add the default "Birthday" field to a display by following these steps. 
• Add a "Sync signups" automation rule to the display to share the information. Additional information on ensuring the information properly syncs is available in this guide. 

 

Once the information is collected and synced to your external provider, you can use the data to create and trigger birthday emails from there. Each provider approaches this slightly differently, so please refer to their documentation for more information. 

Create and send a birthday email

Note: These steps are for users of Privy Email. If you've collected birthday information with a Privy display and synced it to an external email service provider, create the email there. 

To create a birthday email in Privy:

• Navigate to Campaigns.
• Click the New email button.
• Select the template you would like to use as a starting point and click the Save button to have it applied to the email.

 

Customize the email

• Once the template is applied, edit the content using the drag-and-drop email editor. Check out a fully customized example below or download a static example by clicking here.

 

Configure the email sender info

Next, click on the sender info section at the top of the email editor and configure the options. 

1. Confirm or select a reply-to address. Any replies to the email will go to this address. 
2. Edit the subject line. Keep it interesting, on-brand, and concise. A subject line no longer than 7 words or around 40 characters is recommended. 
3. Provide preview text. The text appears after your subject line when viewing the email in the inbox and allows the addition of compelling copy that helps boost open rates and engagement. The text should be 35 to 55 characters and supports Merge Tags.

 

 

 

Note: The default From Name and From Address can be updated in the Sender Options section of your Business Settings. Additionally, you should update your sending domain to be your domain if you have not yet done so.

 

 

• Click the Done button once the options are configured, and then select the Save button at the top right to exit the email editor. 

 

Configure the coupon settings

After exiting the editor, click on the Coupon code card if you would like the birthday email to include a discount or promotion. Please Save after making any changes to these settings. 

• • Add a discount. Select the optional coupon drop-down menu to offer an incentive to your customers that will encourage them to complete their purchase. 

 

Note: Unique coupon codes are not supported for BigCommerce users in newsletters. To include a master coupon, create the coupon code in your BigCommerce account and then incorporate the code directly into the content of your Privy newsletter (e.g., body content, image, etc.). 

 

• Add a merge tag or coupon element. If a coupon is selected and saved, ensure the email contains a Coupon Code merge tag or a Coupon element from the editor's sidebar. The tag or element will populate with the coupon code when the email is sent to customers.

 

Configure the recipients

In the Settings step of the email editor, click on the Edit option next to the Send Newsletter header to select your recipients. The options allow you to send your email to all mailable contacts, contacts that match certain filters, or a segment that was filtered in the past. In this case, create a custom segment based on the custom "Birthday Month" field that you created earlier, and then select the current month. Once these options are set, Save.

 

Name and test the email 

With the recipients selected, name the email by clicking the Edit() icon, providing a non-default name, and clicking the Update button. This name change will make it easier to locate the email for additional edits or a performance review post-send. 

 

 

With a unique name set, click back into the Design card and select the Send Test Email option at the top of the email editor to make sure all of the content displays as expected in your inbox. 

 

Schedule or send the email

To activate the birthday email once its design, content, and settings are customer-ready:

• Click the Save button in the email builder if you haven't already.
• Scroll to the bottom of the email settings page and click the Schedule it or the Send button. 
• Confirm your decision in the subsequent prompt. 

 

Prepare for next month

A birthday email needs to be manually sent each month, so it's important to proactively prepare.

 

To jumpstart the process, navigate to Campaigns, select the Duplicate()  button on a previously sent/created birthday email you'd like to duplicate, and update the content/settings for the appropriate month. 

 

Review performance

Now that you are using newsletters to communicate with customers:

• Learn how to evaluate their success via reporting in this guide.
• Discover which customers will ultimately receive your emails and why in this guide.