A birthday journey sends each contact a note on their birthday, every year, without you scheduling anything. The Birthday template sends one email at 9:00 on the day, in each contact’s time zone.
Who it’s for
Any business that holds its customers’ birthdays: restaurants, salons, shops, gyms and loyalty programmes. For example, Juniper Kitchen, a fictional restaurant group, sends a free dessert on each diner’s birthday.
What you need first
- A date attribute called
birthdayon your contacts, writtenYYYY-MM-DD, or--MM-DDwhen you don’t collect the year. It can arrive by import, from a signup form field, by hand or from your app. See Attributes. This works on every plan. - A time zone on your contacts, if you want 9:00 to be their local time. Contacts without one get it at 9:00 in your workspace’s time zone.
- A verified sending domain. See Set up a sending domain.
1 Start from the template
Go to Journeys, choose New journey, then under Start from a template and Dates, choose Birthday.
2 Check what the template creates
| Part | As the template sets it |
|---|---|
| Trigger | A date arrives, Date attribute birthday, Repeat Every year, Days from the date 0, Time 9:00 |
| 29 February in other years | Use 28 February |
| Step 1 | Send message: Happy birthday, with the contact’s first name, a short note from your team |
| Exit rules | None |
Each contact enters at most once a year.
3 Change it for your business
- Add your treat. The note’s third paragraph is a placeholder that reads Add your own birthday treat here, and nothing stops it going out as it is. Replace it with your gift, offer or thank-you before you turn the journey on.
- Your attribute’s name. If your birthdays are stored under another name, such as
date_of_birth, change the Date attribute. - Send earlier. To give people time to book or order, set Days from the date to
-7for a week before. Then add a Wait of 7 days and a second email on the day itself. - An offer that expires. Give a code that works for the birthday month, and say so in the email.
- Push. If your app has push notifications, change the step’s Channel to Push, or add a push step as well.
- Who’s included. To send only to members of your loyalty programme, add a Contact filter as the first step.
4 Measure it
- Clicks on the email, on the Performance tab under Email outcomes by step.
- Redemptions and revenue: add a conversion goal on your purchase event, with Counts within set to cover the offer, such as 14 days. Available on Starter and above. See Conversion goals.
- Lift: add a Random split before the email with one empty path as a holdout, then compare conversion rates. See Random split and holdout. Keep the holdout small, since everyone in it misses their birthday note.
Common pitfalls
- Dates in the wrong format. A birthday such as
18/04/1990stored as text isn’t read as a date. Store it as1990-04-18or--04-18. - Missed birthdays. Turning the journey on sends nothing for birthdays that have already passed this year. Those contacts get their note next year.