Everybody loves a birthday – but did you know it can also be a great way of connecting with your customers and nurturing your bond?
From celebrating your own milestones such as a company birthday as your business grows, to offering personalized gifts and acknowledging your customers’ special day, it’s easy to turn a birthday email into a happy customer.
Let’s have a look at how birthday marketing emails can work for you and your small business.
What Should a Birthday Email Include?
Your happy birthday greeting of course! But there’s more to it than that. A birthday email should definitely address your customer by name, immediately helping make them feel valued, but they typically include a special offer, free gift or birthday offer.
As a small business, there’s no need for your gift to break the bank. It’s important to identify the right gift for your brand and customers.
Here are some email marketing ideas that you can offer your customers as birthday gifts:
A Personalized Discount Coupon
Sending a coupon is a great way to engage your clients. You can offer discounts on their favorite products if you have that information to hand. Or let them pick their product and offer a discount on the basket total.
Mystery Offers
Everybody loves a mystery! And it’s definitely true in the case of birthday offers, with mystery gifts offering the highest success rate out of all email marketing campaigns.
A Free Gift
Birthday and synonymous with gifts and balloons, so why not offer your subscribers a free gift to celebrate their special day? This can be a gift card or a specific product.
Free Shipping
Sometimes it’s something as simple as shipping that causes someone to abandon a cart. Offering free shipping on their birthday can help turn a cart into a purchase.
Make It Relevant
We all know what it’s like to open a gift and have to hide our disappointment – you don’t want to do that to your customers. You can feature specific products or services they have previously used if you have that information readily available.
Make It Fabulous
Make your email stand out from the crowd with exciting GIFs and animation. Don’t be afraid to get creative, but be sure to stay in-keeping with your brand.
Here are some important features to consider when it comes to designing your email:
- Keep it clean – short and sweet
- Use your brand coloring
- Include your logo, contact details and brand name at the top
- Don’t forget to link to your social media
- Make sure you include a call-to-action button to encourage click rate
- Remember to make it mobile-friendly
- Don’t forget to sign it – leave space for your signature with important details like your logo, business name, contact information, socials and website
Make It Personal
Just like the gift itself, your email should feel customer-centric. More than anything else, you need to generate copy that is personalized. Imagine your email is a birthday card landing right in the hands of your customer. You want it to speak directly to them. Use their name in the subject line, the body copy and even the call-to-action at the end of the email.
Create Compelling Copy
As well as a birthday-specific email title, make sure you use appropriate language in the body of the email. Phrases such as “You’re Special To Us” or “Treat Yourself” can enhance the connection. At every stage you want your customer to know you are treating them.
When Should Your Email Land?
You’ll know yourself from your inbox, lots of companies send an influx of emails on the first of the birthday month, but is that the most effective time? You want to make sure you time your birthday emails exactly right, to generate the best click-through-rate.
More than half of birthday emails are sent on the exact birthdate, while a third are sent between one and three weeks prior to the special day. Lots of businesses let the email land on the first of the month giving users till the end of the month to redeem their birthday reward.
Send a Reminder
Whenever you choose to send your birthday email, it’s a good idea to send a reminder. It gives your clients another chance to take advantage of your birthday generosity. According to Experian it increases the interest by a further 20%.
How Do You Collect Your Customer’s Birthdate?
If you’re missing the all important date from your current client base, it’s an easy fix. You can generate an email with a catchy title such as “we want to celebrate you” or “we’re planning a surprise” to encourage them to share their details.
For new customers, it’s a great idea to collect this information using a website pop-up asking them to subscribe to your newsletter leaving a space for them to enter their birthdate. One extra tip – make sure the site is mobile-friendly to grab people on the go!
In both cases, for new and returning clients, you can flag the benefits they’ll enjoy by signing up, including special offers, birthday gifts and interesting brand specific content.
How Can Glue Help You?
As a small business owner it can sometimes feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day already. But with Glue, we can help automate your birthday marketing from digital coupon creation to subscriptions and digital loyalty cards. Why not join us today and help turn your average press release into an exciting birthday campaign?
