This article explains how to set up a complete birthday automation flow, including follow-up and reminders.
Acknowledging your customers on their birthdays is a simple yet powerful way to build long-term loyalty. With a birthday automation you can automatically send personalized greetings and a special offer at the right time, without manual work. By combining labels, multichannel promotions, and channel prioritization, you can ensure every customer receives a relevant message.
Before you get started
Entry criteria
To ensure the communication reaches the right contacts, make sure birth dates or social security numbers are collected in your Engage setup. You can also add filters such as Reachable by email or Reachable by SMS if needed.
Labels
Labels facilitate tracking the contacts and assigning them different communication. With labels you can segment on contacts that are in specific automation.
Conditional splits
A conditional split divides contacts into different paths based on a defined condition. In birthday automations, conditional splits are often used to prioritize communication channels. For example, contacts reachable by email can receive an email first, while those who are not reachable by email can receive an SMS instead. This ensures that every contact receives the birthday message through the most suitable channel.
Trigger splits and time delays
A trigger split is useful when you want to make sure that activities within a workflow are triggered by certain actions, such as a purchase. If the action isn’t performed, you can wait until a certain time has passed, for example seven days, before sending the customer forward in the automation.
This can be compared to a time delay, which simply postpones the next action with your chosen time regardless of the customers’ actions.
How it works
The automation starts based on each contact’s birthday. Contacts enter the flow a set number of days before or after the birthday and are labeled for tracking. A birthday promotion is assigned, and the contact receives a greeting message through their preferred communication channel.
After the greeting is sent, the automation waits for a defined period to allow customers to redeem the offer. A trigger split then checks whether the promotion has been used. Customers who redeem the offer exit the automation, while those who do not receive a reminder message to encourage them to take advantage of the birthday promotion.
Finally, the label is removed from all contacts to keep the database organized and ready for future automations.
Setting it up
Flowchart
Trigger: Contact’s birthday
Entry timing: Contact enters the flow a set number of days before or after their birthday (for example, –5 days)
Track: Set label such as In birthday automation
Offer: Assign multichannel birthday promotion
Channel decision: Conditional split based on reachable channel (email or SMS)
Message 1: Send birthday greeting with promotion
Wait: Time delay allowing customers to redeem the offer
Check: Has the promotion been redeemed?
- If yes: Remove label and exit the automation
- If no: Send reminder message
Final check (optional): Did the reminder lead to a purchase?
End: Remove label from all remaining contacts
Step-by-step
1. Click Automation in the left-hand menu, hit New automation and select the trigger Contact’s birthday.
2. Configure the entry conditions as desired by hovering on the trigger and clicking Edit (the pencil icon). Select how long before (negative value) or after (positive value) the birthday the automation should start. In this case the customers enter the flow five days prior to their birthday.
3. Click the plus sign below the trigger, choose Activity, and select Set label. This facilitates tracking the contacts that have entered the flow. It could, for example, be In birthday automation.
4. To accompany the birthday greeting, treat your customer with a special offer. Assign a multichannel promotion by clicking the plus sign, selecting Activity and then Assign multichannel promotion.
5. After the promotion, click on the plus sign and choose Condition under Splits. To ensure you get through to all contacts, regardless of their preferred communication channel, split the contacts on different channels—email and SMS.
6. On the Email branch, add an email wishing the customer a happy birthday in advance and informing about the offer. Click on the plus sign, then Activity and Send email sendout. On the SMS branch, choose Send SMS instead and add a message with similar content together with a link to your website.
7. After the sendouts, add a time delay to each branch. Click the plus sign, select Time delay and configure it to match the birthday. In this example: five days.
8. Add a conditional split on each branch to follow up on whether the customers redeem the promotion. If yes, remove the label (plus sign, Activity, and Remove label). For contacts that don’t redeem the promotion, send a reminder via email and SMS respectively.
9. To follow up further, add a final trigger split to check whether the customers redeem the promotion. Then finish by removing the labels from all branches.
Remember to Save and Activate the automation to get it going.
Common mistakes to avoid
Not collecting birth dates on the contact card
The trigger Contact’s birthday requires that a birth date or social security number is stored on the contact card. If this information is missing, contacts won’t enter the automation.
Starting the automation too early or too late
Make sure the entry timing matches your intention. For example, setting –5 days means the contact enters the automation five days before their birthday. A positive value means the automation starts after the birthday.
Not assigning the promotion before sending the greeting
If the promotion is not assigned before the message is sent, customers might receive a birthday greeting mentioning an offer that they cannot redeem.
Forgetting to add a redemption check
Without a trigger split checking whether the promotion has been used, contacts who already redeemed the offer may still receive reminders.
Forgetting to remove the label
Labels are useful for tracking contacts in the automation, but they should be removed at the end of the flow to keep the database clean.
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