Birthday emails are a great way for marketers to retain customers and nurture brand loyalty. All of us want to feel special on our big day, and your customers are no different. It’s a perfect opportunity for you to thank your customer for their continued patronage. But a generic happy birthday won’t cut a deal. You will need a few special considerations for your birthday emails to make them relevant, as your brand image can be compromised if they don’t impress your recipients. Here’s how you can design an enticing birthday email campaign.
The Importance Of Birthday Emails In Your Brand Strategy
Before we begin, let me give a strong reason to start working on birthday email campaigns: It generates 342% more revenue compared to other promotional messages. Good enough? Not only that, but it is also a fantastic way to nurture customer loyalty for your brand. It gives you an opportunity to send relevant and highly personalized content to make them feel that you genuinely care about the mutual relationship. Birthday emails are also a great way to boost engagement. You could offer some special discounts that encourage customers to visit your website even if they didn’t visit for a long time for reactivation purposes. Have a look at an example from Fitton. You can craft a similar message by simply customizing free HTML email templates:
Ways To Find Out Customer’s Birthdate
In this customer-centric world, having relevant data and customer insight gives you a winning edge. Customers seek privacy, and as a marketer, you need data. The more, the better and frequent is even better. You can use the following ways to accumulate data for your campaign:
- Through subscriber registration form by including an input field.
- Through survey mail when your subscribers are comfortable with you.
- By letting them know the reason that you would like to offer a special birthday discount
- By being creative like the below example from Origins:
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Essentials of A Birthday Email
A good birthday email is a healthy mix of many components. You should boldly highlight the recipient’s first name, use a festive color scheme, hero image, and even use a countdown timer that can make your email look extraordinary. Together with the aesthetics of the email, you need to add value too. If you offer a 10%-15% discount frequently and you offer the same 10-15% on birthday occasions, your customer will not pay any attention to your message. In most cases, a 25% birthday discount is found to be the best performing. If you can’t offer something special, then skip the discount. Customers will not be very impressed if they think you sent a birthday email just for them to spend extra. In such cases, it is better to send a personalized appreciation note with a birthday message.
Email Best Practices
Like all your marketing campaigns, birthday campaigns also need to be carefully planned and calibrated to achieve maximum engagement and conversion. Here are a few tips to use while designing your birthday campaign:
- Maintain a mailing list’s hygiene by periodically sanitizing your list of cold leads.
- The subject line should be convincing enough for subscribers to find it worth opening. Use the A/B Split tests when you arrive at two of the most appealing subject lines. The subject line should be crisp yet captivating.
- Make full use of preheader text and also include an email signature.
- For birthday campaigns, keep email copy short and sweet. Lengthy emails are not appreciated, especially on birthdays. You can use free HTML email templates and customize them to fit your needs.
- Keep your CTA button and main message in the upper fold.
- Test your emails thoroughly; you shouldn’t kickstart the campaign without checking how it renders across all kinds of devices. Make sure you are using responsive HTML email templates.
- Design a CTA that stands out and also looks pretty. The blue color appears to be most marketers’ choice. Use A/B Split tests to find the best CTA copy and design for your message. Again, you can use customized responsive HTML email templates to ensure seamless renderability across all device-OS-browser combinations.
- Choosing the best time to send your emails is also essential for engagement; office hours from Tuesday to Thursday are considered the best send times for email marketing.
How To Automate Your Birthday Emails
Most of the automation software gives you a basic birthday sequence with the options to edit and personalize. It would be best if you designed a drip campaign that resonates with their excitement for their birthdays. A sequence of two or three emails should do just great. A pre-birthday email can optionally be sent 2-3 weeks before the birthday. Use of HTML email templates for this email is highly recommended. The next email with all the bells and whistles must be scheduled to be delivered on the actual birthday. And finally, a post-birthday email reminding them to use the discount should be scheduled 1-2 days before the discount expires.
Final Thoughts
Birthday emails are a great way to let your customers know that you appreciate their loyalty and build a reciprocating relationship. Use the tips mentioned above to make a cohesive campaign for making the recipient feel special. I hope this article is good enough to motivate you to start a birthday email campaign for your organization and help you achieve stunning results.
Written by Kevin George. The Head of Marketing at Email Uplers, one of the fastest growing custom email design and coding companies, and specializes in crafting professional email templates, PSD to HTML email conversion and free HTML email templates. He loves gadgets, bikes, jazz and eats and breathes email marketing. He enjoys sharing his insights and thoughts on email marketing best practices on his blog.
