We all remember the days we purchased something for a friend’s birthday and got a beautiful birthday card to go with it. Brands remember it, too. But times have changed, and the way they interact with customers has changed as well.
So, now, they prefer to never forget the customer’s birthday by setting a birthday reminder and/or sending them a birthday email. This can lead to results like the ones the following statistic shows:
Source
The type of conversion shown above is a good place to start – great, even! – and an even better place to start creating a more personal relationship between your brand and your prospects, potential customers, or existing customers.
After all, this is the ultimate goal of email marketing: Creating and nurturing relationships between brands and their audience. That way, brands can score better engagement rates, they can increase their brand awareness, build trust, and be considered an authority. And let’s not forget the strategic aspect, which is boosting the ROI of their email marketing campaigns.
But how can you go from zero to birthday hero?
Also Try: BuddyPress Birthday Widget to show the Upcoming birthdays of the members on your BuddyPress site.
Pick an ESP and Create a Birthday Email Template
Before even starting out with your first birthday email campaign, you have to make sure you have picked an Email Service Provider (ESP) that makes sense for you, your brand, and your goals.
Let’s assume that you’ve set your subscription forms and your landing pages, and you’ve asked for some extra details upon sign-up – in our case, the lead’s date of birth. Now, you’re ready to create a birthday email campaign. Right?
Well, the answer to that could be no. The first thing to do – even before picking out the perfect email template – would be to use an email marketing and marketing automation platform like Moosend to set up an automation sequence that will allow you to send the right email to the right person at just the right time. Otherwise, your entire campaign will make no sense.
Make sure to invest in a platform that can offer you powerful segmentation and personalization options. A lot of email templates to choose from would be a great place to start, or the opportunity to customize one exactly how you like it. Nothing says “We want to celebrate with you!” like a personalized birthday email with a spot-on tone of voice.
Again, those are some of the features many popular platforms offer. The possibilities might be endless, but the point is for you to pick out the one that makes sense to you and serves your aspirations.
But this is not enough on its own. You can’t send a birthday email without some special “content”. Let’s see what that is.
A Personalized Email That Gets More Opens and Clicks
Personalization is one of the most prominent and fruitful content marketing tactics and one that can boost your sales and ROI when it comes to birthday email marketing.
A subject line that just says “Happy Birthday” and includes a generic offer won’t get you far. On the contrary, a first – and last – name can go a long way, so make sure to use it, along with some personalized suggestions for the subscriber. For example, if your marketing automation software “catches” them looking at a specific product, make sure to take notice and include it in your email’s body copy.
Being Short and Sweet Wins the Race, so Is Being Timely
Don’t wait until the last minute to send your birthday email campaign. Sometimes, people love to plan ahead and time their purchases to arrive on a specific date.
Make sure your automation goes off a couple of weeks – or a week – before their special day so that your recipients will know to check out your website and your offer.
Now, let’s assume that your prospects receive your email. You don’t want to make it long and tedious. Instead, you want it to be short, comprehensive, and as simple as can be. Your recipient’s attention should be focused on the things that matter – like the discount code or the products you’ve got to offer.
Use actionable verbs and make sure that the copy of your CTA button comes naturally after your email’s body copy. Use phrases like “Claim your discount”, or “Collect your gift”.
Be Fun
A birthday email campaign is supposed to be celebratory. This means that it needs to be more lighthearted than the rest of your content, even if your niche doesn’t “do” lighthearted per se.
Adjust your tone of voice to the occasion, make it celebratory and genuine. Use GIFs and countdown timers that will count down to the recipient’s birthday.
Being fun can be portrayed by the colors and the images you use as well. Use bold colors – as bold as your brand’s image allows, of course – and make your email’s content look like a mini-party. This will elicit an emotional response, nurture your leads, and gently nudge them further down the sales funnel.
Super Pro Tip: A good idea, especially if you’re an eCommerce brand, would be to ask your recipients to take a picture with their “gift” upon receiving it and upload it on their social media accounts with your branded hashtags and a mention of your brand’s account. Reshare it and utilize user-generated content that will definitely attract more leads.
Spice Things up With an (Interactive) Coupon
The fantastic conversion rate of birthday emails that we saw above is mainly due to the fact that birthday emails usually contain some form of coupon or special offer that can boost the conversion of an eCommerce store, especially during its first years.
You can spice things up and make users interact with your content by adding a virtual coupon they can scratch to reveal their gift or discount. This will have them spend some time on your content and, eventually, think of what they’d love to purchase.
The coupon could be a special discount, a gift with the next purchase, free shipping, the works! Just decide what’s more beneficial for your brand and what will help you reach your goals faster. You don’t have to create birthday discounts and special offers that will break the bank.
The Takeaway
Nurturing leads isn’t always as easy as it sounds, but email marketing surely builds relationships that allow people to trust brands enough to proceed with a purchase or a referral.
Making your customers feel loved and unique – as if a friend is contacting them – could be tricky business, but birthday emails can bring you one step closer to your goals and everything you’re trying to achieve.
All you need is a good ESP, automation tools, and a lot of imagination to create birthday email templates that will make this happen.
Author Bio:
Téa Liarokapi is a Senior Content Writer for Moosend, an email marketing and marketing automation platform, and an obsessive writer in general. In her free time, she tries to find new ways to stuff more books in her bookcase and content ideas – and cats – to play with.
