White Paper
Email best practice:
Birthday programmes
Best practice and strategy for designing birthday emails
Contents
The birthday email
3
What?
3
Aim
3
Why?
3
How?
3
Holiday season trigger mailings by country
4
Collect data
5
Create a filter
6
Decide on a single or multiple emails
7
Outline content (keeping it fresh and relevant)
8
Decide on the campaign hierarchy
9
Decide on the frequency capping rules relative to other campaigns
9
Decide on a test programme
10
Assign schedule
10
Set up the programme and automate
10
Other considerations
11
Best in class
12
Checklist12
Summary12
The birthday email
What?
Birthday emails are defined as email marketing
messages that acknowledge the subscribers’ date of
birth with a positive, personalised and celebratory tone.
Aims
They aim at strengthening engagement, increasing
loyalty and conversion.
Why?
Marketers are becoming increasingly fond of this practice
as it allows them to send one to one communications that
cuts through the marketing noise. Extremely relevant and
targeted birthday campaigns have a very high return on
investment (ROI), especially when triggered. They are one
of the best ways for brands to differentiate themselves
with minimal effort and build a more personal
relationship with the customer.
How?
Creating a birthday campaign is simple. Marketers need
to follow nine steps:
1. Collect data
2. Create a filter
3. Decide on a single or multiple emails
4. Outline content (keeping it fresh and relevant)
5. Decide on the campaign hierarchy
6. Decide on the frequency capping rules relative to
other campaigns
7. Decide on a test programme
8. Assign schedule
9. Set up the programme and automate.
The table opposite shows the value of birthday messages
versus those of standard promotional emails. More
effective in certain countries, their ROI is nevertheless
globally evident.
In addition to generating higher open, click and
conversion rates, birthday campaigns are a great brand
building opportunity, driving online traffic and drive instore footfall.
Email best practice: Birthday programmes | Page 3
Holiday season trigger mailings by country
Unique open rate
Unique click rate
Australia
China
France
New Zealand
Singapore
Spain
United Kingdom
United States
0
10%
20%
Abandon cart
30%
Birthday
40%
Welcomes
50%
0
5%
10%
All mailings
Experian Marketing Services’ International holiday email performance study, a look back at global trends (Oct. 1, 2012 – Dec. 31, 2012).
Page 4 | Email best practice: Birthday programmes
15%
20%
Collect data
In order to be able to carry out effective birthday
messaging to your customers, you need to collect data.
Date of birth can be requested at point of sign-up, and
if not, the first welcome email can direct the customer
to a data capture form by asking for further preference
details.
The benefit of the staggered, preference updates method
is that it is less likely to overwhelm the new subscriber. It
is often for this reason that we see a preference update
button in day-to-day promotional emails. This way,
subscribers can share their personal information in their
own time once they have built trust in the brand.
If a brand has failed to request this information over time
or has received poor quality third party data, marketers
can be left with thousands of email addresses without any
personal information. ‘We want to surprise you on your
birthday’ campaigns are often deployed to fill those gaps
and can be a good way to collect date of birth information
for existing customers.
Some customers may be reluctant to give their year of
birth so it’s at times better to simply ask for day and
month of birth.
Finally, don’t forget to inform customers of the reason for
asking their birth date such as giving them a treat on their
birthday. This is likely to increase the number of birth
dates collected.
Email best practice: Birthday programmes | Page 5
Create the filter/segment
Creating the filter or segment is straightforward.
Marketers need to build a query for birth date, such
as ‘Any subscriber who has a birthday today’ or for a
birthday reminder email ‘birth day is seven days ago’.
If birth date is unavailable and the aim of the programme
is to collect more accurate data, then create a segment
based on anyone who has not got a birth date registered
with their email address. (See example below)
This is the perfect stage to check the accuracy of your
data. We advise running a count to look for strange
figures such as a high number of subscribers under the
age of 10 (very unlikely), or for example a high count for
people born on January 1st (default drop down value
when using lists). These subscribers should be sent a
‘we want to suspire you on your birthday’ campaign to
confirm their date of birth.
Will business as usual have priority over birthday?
Pre-Birthday Email
Send an email (days/month) before someone's birthday
Segment: Birthday is (days/month) from now • Scheduling: Approved for recurring daily
Birthday Email
Send an email to someone on their birthday
Segment: Birthday is today • Scheduling: Approved for recurring daily
Thanks, have a great birthday!
Reminder Email
Send an email (days/month) after someone’s birthday
if they have purchased from the birthday email.
Send an email (days/month) after someone’s birthday
if they have not made a purchase.
Segment: Birthday is (days/month) ago, and
transaction mailing is one of (Birthday Email
Mailing Name) and INCLUDE transaction equal or
greater than 1.
Segment: Birthday is (days/month) ago, and mailing
is one of (BirthdayEmail Mailing Name) and EXCLUDE
transaction equal or greater than 1.
Scheduling: Approved for recurring daily.
Page 6 | Email best practice: Birthday programmes
Scheduling: Approved for recurring daily.
Decide on single or multiple emails
The most common and easiest strategy is to send one
single birthday email. However, sending a series of two or
three emails can be much more effective, especially with
time limited offers. This extra step will drive sales where
the offer has not been used.
We have drafted an example of birthday series with
content ideas:
The initial email might be sent a couple of days or weeks
ahead of the recipient’s birthday, promoting an offer to
use within a specific time period. The first email allows
marketers to take advantage of excitement leading up to
the birthday and spark interest.
• ‘It's your birthday next week!’
On the subscribers’ birthday, a second email might
deliver birthday wishes with a gentle offer reminder
to encourage conversion (if no interaction occurred in
the first email). This email would be filled with emotive
words to improve loyalty and increase engagement.
Marketers should carefully test copy and CTA wording
as the likelihood of conversion is at its highest.
In the event of no conversion, a third email could be
sent as the last reminder, 24 hours before the end of the
offer. Very quick to design and little effort necessary to
maintain, this email can make the difference!
Email 1: Seven days before birthday
• 22% off for your 22nd birthday, 15% off on Friday,
10% on Saturday
• Display browsing/cart history
• Countdown timer before official birthday.
Email 2: Birthday!
• Birthday Greetings
• Remind users of incentive
• Fun ideas for things to do on your birthday
• Use real people content: celebrities celebrating their
birthday today.
Email 3: Offer expires in 24 hours
(could be sent after the date)
• Subject line: Stress urgency of offer
• Countdown timer
• Social media: Share your birthday memories.
Finally, some brands may choose to resend a birthday
campaign after the birthday, particularly if the offer
hasn’t been used. Certain demographics receive money
as a gift and are likely to spend it after the actual date.
We should also mention that all other sends should be
frequency capped on the same day, to avoid multiple
emails being received.
As for any automated campaigns, best results will
arise from testing. We advise marketers to evaluate
the effectiveness of their current programme, or of the
first birthday email, and to build from it, while carefully
reviewing results. It will become very easy to spot which
of the series leads to achieving the brands’ goal.
Email best practice: Birthday programmes | Page 7
Outline content
This section focuses on all the essential aspects of a
birthday campaign.
Subject line and pre-header
Whether the brand is using an incentive or not, the
subject line must reflect the expectations right away.
Giving false hopes will only damage the subscribers’
perception of your brand. Remember to use the preheader text to your advantage.
If including offers, the incentive should be put at the
forefront of the subject line. Making it clear will increase
your conversions.
When you are not sending a discount offer, then add value
to the relationship by using emotive words. Marketers
have more margins for creativity in this instance. Words
such as ‘care’, ‘love’, ‘feel’, ‘need’ are recommended.
Greetings
Be human, add a personal touch. Try to think outside the
box. Customers are feeling happy – making them laugh or
generating a positive emotional response on the day will
help build brand advocacy with the customer and may
lead to them sharing the content.
“73% of companies have already
leveraged data to increase revenue.
Of those companies that have already
increased revenue, 57% used data to
increase an existing revenue stream.”
Source: Econsultancy Big Data Trends Report, 2013
Page 8 | Email best practice: Birthday programmes
Below are the top five subject lines based on unique
open rates (Experian Marketing Services, 2011):
1. A special gift for your Birthday
2. Happy Birthday %%FIRSTNAME%%
3. Happy Birthday from [Company]
4. Your special Birthday Bonus
5. A special gift of 20% off for your Birthday.
Social sharing
What better way to gain traffic and fans on your social
sites than on your subscribers’ birthday. Ask them to
share their favourite moment or to post a picture of them
with your offer to get more presents.
Personalisation
Use what you know and make the email personalised and
relevant. This cannot be stressed enough - the only way
to make an impact is to use data – a lot of data.
Decide on the campaign hierarchy
The following information could be used to display
targeted content:
• First name in the subject line, copy of email, or in
dynamic images to display someone’s first name
(make sure the data is accurate!)
• Gender for a different creative
• Nearest store: Address to populate a local map with
nearby stores or relevant content based on city
(store opens/closes)
• Purchase history for up and cross-sell
• Browse data or clicks from email to display products
or categories on website.
Subscriber engagement:
High engagement (clicks and purchases): customers
could receive smaller discount as they are already
engaged. It might be worth looking at incentivising with
free deliveries.
The hierarchy rule should be based upon the most
profitable offer in terms of your goals.
If the aim is to increase conversion, make sure the email
with the biggest offer is sent rather than the birthday
email. If it is the case of improving data quality or loyalty,
ensure to keep the birthday email at the top of your list.
Decide on the frequency capping rules
relative to other campaigns
Once the hierarchy is set, you must consider applying
suppression or exclusion rules in order to avoid
emailing subscribers twice in this short period of time.
For example – exclude anyone receiving business as
usual mailings in the last [xx] days, or exclude anyone
who might receive a birthday campaign in the last/
next [xx] days in your business as usual segment. The
same process applies for a cross channel approach.
Management of exclusions will help reduce overmessaging to the customer.
Low engagement: This group of users are more likely to
need a big incentive to break their systematic behaviour
of non-purchase.
Incentives / offers – if applicable
Whether brands wish to use coupons, discounts, freebies,
money off, percentage reductions etc. there is no right
or wrong answer. Marketers should, without a doubt, be
testing which works best.
Below is a list of the most used offers:
• % or £ Off
• Buy one get one free
• Free delivery
• Gift with purchase/no purchase
• Loyalty points
• Special, limited time offers
• However, consider the overuse of spammy words,
which could initiate spam traps.
The Experian Benchmark report, concluded that '£ off'
and '20% off' were the most popular.
Email best practice: Birthday programmes | Page 9
Decide on a test programme
Planning a test programme around your birthday
campaign is the best way to continuously gain better
results. It is time to put to the test your assumptions and
internal battles around subject lines, timings, creative,
offers etc, to test!
Ensure to test one aspect of your mailing at a time, while
keeping everything else constant. For example, you wish
to test using a question in your subject line, versus not
using a question. Ensure that your from address is the
same, as well as the time and day of send.
Assign a schedule
There is unfortunately no right or wrong answer in terms
of scheduling! Birthday emails can be sent on the day,
a week or month before, and in some cases a couple of
days after a birthday.
Below are a few examples of this process in action
Experian Research shows that 55% of birthday emails are
delivered on the actual birthday, whereas 19% are sent
three weeks before, 10% are delivered one week prior,
and 2% two weeks later. Ultimately, this will change for
each brand not only based upon the factors above, but
also by continuously measuring performance of these
messages and optimising.
Set up the programme and automate
Scheduling the programme is also straightforward. When
going through the approval process, ensure that each
email is set to deploy daily, monthly, or every Monday, to
match your scheduling strategy. Make sure that it is set
for recurring send, and include a start and end date.
The timing, as well as the number of emails in a birthday
campaign can be defined by the objective of the birthday
campaign. Firstly, marketers should consider the value
of the offering. Then, based upon its value, it becomes
possible to define the content of the email. From there,
the marketer can then identify when is the best time
to send this message to ensure that the message is
interacted with.
Aim
Conversion
Improve loyalty
What?
When?
Example
Low value
On the day
Free coffee
Medium value
A couple of days prior
Discounted clothes
High value
A couple of weeks prior
Discounted holiday
Low value
On the day
Free KitKat
Medium value
On the day
£20 off next purchase
High value
On the day
10,000 points on your Amex Gold
Page 10 | Email best practice: Birthday programmes
Other considerations
Slowly but surely, brands are considering the power of
mobile and social to help achieve their goals.
SMS or Social can be used to reach your customers at
the right time, in the right place, and on the right device.
Sending a text to a user using their location tracking ID
can allow brands to send a relevant targeted message
saying ‘Come into our store in the next 2h and get 50% off
any purchase’. Social can be an excellent post-purchase
channel to interact with customers, asking them to post
related content online.
Below is an example of a cross channel approach to
birthday messages. It’s important to make sure the
cross-channel look and feel and the offer is consistent.
EMAIL 1
Seven days prior to
birthday
SMS 1
Between two to seven
days prior to birthday
EMAIL 2
Email on birthday
EMAIL 3
Seven days after
birthday
Geo-location push notification to drive footfall
Email best practice: Birthday programmes | Page 11
Best in class
Cross-channel offers
All offers, incentives or discounts should be redeemable
in-store, online or over the phone. We strongly advise
giving customers the option.
Images off
Best practice states that an email opened without turning
on the images should look as well as it could to represent
its true design when switching on the images.
Anniversary emails
Some brands like to celebrate years of membership.
The aim is to get the user to post more on their blog.
Very simple – very effective.
Persuasive copy
Use text within the email to specify, recognise and
reinforce the relationship that you have with your
customers. Birthday emails that help the recipient better
identify and acknowledge the relationship with your
brand only add to the strength of that relationship and
promote a positive response.
Positive content
Almost everyone loves to celebrate birthdays. Use
this opportunity to have your products be part of their
festivities, and you’ll enhance the chance of creating
a winning situation for all. The email creative should
invoke the festive, celebratory emotions associated with
birthdays, which can be accomplished with engaging
photography, festive colours, animated gifs, videos and
other visual assets.
Humour
Be playful, make a joke.
Half birthdays
Half birthdays are also a nice touch!
Contextual content
Be creative and include fun facts, year-to-date events
such as celebrity birthdays, sporting events, etc.
Page 12 | Email best practice: Birthday programmes
Checklist
What is the goal?
Are the subject line and pre-header effective?
Is the chosen schedule appropriate to meet the goal?
Are you testing this?
Do the incentives match the brand’s style?
Are you testing these?
Are the coupons or offers redeemable in any
channel?
Is personalisation being used effectively?
Images off – how is the email rendering?
Can you improve it?
Is there a cross-channel opportunity?
Summary
Birthday emails are simple to set up and very cheap to
maintain. The main question to ask yourself is whether
you have accurate data to run this campaign, and if
not, how you can design your campaign to gain more
knowledge. Don’t forget that the key to outstanding
campaigns is testing!
If you would like Experian to help you create a
birthday campaign, then please get in touch with us at
[email protected]
If you would like Experian
Marketing Services’s Expert
Digital Consultancy team to
help you on anything that
has been highlighted in this
document, please contact us on:
[email protected]
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