With the rise of individualism as a commodity, personalized marketing is an important feature of social media campaigns. Automation makes it easy to segment audiences, create campaigns and reach customers as individuals, making them feel connected to your brand.
Using email marketing services like MailChimp or Aweber, you can quickly create automated birthday emails. It’s as simple as requesting your customers’ birthdates, entering them into the birthday field, creating a birthday email, and setting up the automation. Your warm fuzzy messages should also include an incentive to buy, after all, it is the main goal of your marketing efforts.
While you are working at strengthening your relationship with customers, offering discounts and buy-one-get-one-free offers encourages consumer spending in a way that makes customers feel connected with your brand. There are many benefits of sending birthday wishes to your loyal customers. According to statistics, birthday emails outperform all other types of promotional email:
- Open rates – 53{21dc2fe1b43c4cf57a2e25a56b286f09fbb32a45ddf34dcf04be366972dd7b06} higher
- Unique click-through rates – 179{21dc2fe1b43c4cf57a2e25a56b286f09fbb32a45ddf34dcf04be366972dd7b06} higher
- Revenue per email – 342{21dc2fe1b43c4cf57a2e25a56b286f09fbb32a45ddf34dcf04be366972dd7b06} higher
- Transaction rates – 481{21dc2fe1b43c4cf57a2e25a56b286f09fbb32a45ddf34dcf04be366972dd7b06} higher
With that in mind, there are some things to keep in mind when composing the perfect birthday wish for your customers.
All about them
One of the biggest criticisms of birthday emails is that they’re a ploy by brands to get you to spend more. Some customers see through the gesture and see only that you want them to spend more money on their products. You need to find a way to put the customer at the centre of your campaign, and that is as simple as actually personalizing the message by offering discounts on products they frequently purchase or free add ons, such as large fries with their next meal purchase, or free sample-sized lipstick in the colour they most often buy with their next purchase.
A personal message
Your birthday message needs to connect, and the best way to do that is to include the name of the person you are sending best wishes to. Research shows that birthday emails that include the customer’s first name in the subject line have unique open rates that are 17{21dc2fe1b43c4cf57a2e25a56b286f09fbb32a45ddf34dcf04be366972dd7b06} higher than birthday emails with non-personalized subject lines. So remember to send ‘Dear John’ a happy birthday email.
A little mystery
Research shows that the most successful birthday email offer is the mystery offer, bringing in over 500{21dc2fe1b43c4cf57a2e25a56b286f09fbb32a45ddf34dcf04be366972dd7b06} more revenue per email than any discount or other birthday offer. Some people like surprises, and often even more so on their birthdays. A ‘spin-and-win’ or bring this voucher to our store for your gift is a good way to add a little mystery.
Add value
Offering a discount code or free gift with purchase is a great way to engage customers, and even get renewed attention from those who might not have made a recent purchase.
Research shows that emails with a birthday coupon for 25{21dc2fe1b43c4cf57a2e25a56b286f09fbb32a45ddf34dcf04be366972dd7b06} off brought in almost four times more revenue than any other discount amount. The next most lucrative discount amount was 15{21dc2fe1b43c4cf57a2e25a56b286f09fbb32a45ddf34dcf04be366972dd7b06} off.
Outstanding
Your email should be bold and eye-catching. It should be fun and relevant to your brand. Video, GIFs, memes or simple posters are all great ways to connect with your birthday customers, as long as they are well designed, reflect your values and invite your customer to feel connected with your brand.
KYC
You should know your customer. You need to use your customer data to really know what your customer likes. If you have a narrow customer base, it’s easy to have a few templates that serve your base; but if your customer base is highly varied, you might need a few versions of your birthday email to connect with every recipient. Remember also that many people like to celebrate their family and friends on their birthday, so offers that include expanding your offer to their nearest and dearest can connect.
More than a one-off
The most successful birthday email marketing campaigns create an email drip campaign by:
- Sending an email suggesting that the recipient share their gift wishlist with friends and family
- Following up with a late birthday email or a reminder email
- Following up with a week-long or month-long series of birthday wishes
Why Birthday Emails Again?
When done right, birthday emails can solidify customer relationships.
- Birthday emails are the perfect opportunity for you to connect with customers.
- You can build your brand reputation by offering generous birthday offers.
- You can boost engagement with birthday emails, especially if you follow a drip campaign.
- The strategy can be applied to all your customers because everyone has a birthday, and because it’s a private email, you are unlikely to offend those who do not like their birthday to be made public or those who do not celebrate their birthday for personal or religious reasons, which means that you should remember to offer an opt-out clause on your subscription information.
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