10 TIPS FOR WRITING AN EFFECTIVE BIRTHDAY EMAIL

Traditional communication, typically placed on channels such as print, radio and TV, was based on the idea that the more people an advertisement reached, the more it would lead to sales results.

The advent of the Internet and later social media, however, have radically changed a fundamental element of marketing communication: the relationship with the consumer.

Whereas in the past, advertising used to be able to inspire fascination through its creativity and could rely on a relatively limited number of channels to reach the intended target group, this is no longer the case.

Companies have at their disposal dozens of virtual touch-points to get in touch with their customers, and they can often do so directly on their mobile devices, the tool that most represents us today and on which each person spends an average of 7 hours a day.

The presence of increasingly ‘personal’ channels has made it possible to create communication that is less and less aimed at large groups of consumers and instead more oriented towards a direct relationship of trust between brand and individual customer.

This is a relationship that today we are trying to make more and more authentic and personal, away from the marketing logic of selling at all costs and closer to the idea that a customer who gets what he really needs at the right time will be a customer with ahigher lifetime value.

Today, communicating with one’s customers means knowing how to personalise content and make unique but above all authentic a relationship that until a few years ago was considered merely from a business point of view.

But how can this relationship be made authentic and special?

One of the most effective and popular ways are certainly birthday emails .

Why send a birthday email?

Birthday e-mails are automatic messages that are sent to your customers on the anniversary of their birth.

They bring you closer to the customer, put them at the centre of your strategy of email marketing and help improve your overall communication.

In addition, they can help you to:

• Increasing engagement

A congratulatory message on one’s birthday is always much appreciated and the personal character of the communication increases user involvement with your activities.

It is not just a message, but a way to let your customers know that you pay attention to detail and that you dedicate your time to them.

• Migliorare la fidelizzazione

A loyal customer is a customer who, because of the value he or she recognises in the relationship with the brand, makes purchases more frequently than a regular customer.

Birthday e-mails contribute to increasing your brand reputation, which is important today in order to have a target group that can bring long-term benefits.

• Increasing sales

Whether you have an e-commerce or a physical store, by sending a gift discount code or special offer in your birthday email, you can encourage users to purchase and gain new revenue.

Discounts may relate to service upgrades or to particular types of products, in any case the customer will feel appreciated for an unexpected gift and will be more inclined to make the purchase.

• Re-engaging inactive customers

A greeting email could be an opportunity to reconnect with users who interact less with your messages, invite them to a meeting or even just renew their availability and presence for any need.

An opportunity is never wasted to tell your customers that you ‘are there’.

Writing a birthday email: best practice

Let’s see together how to write an effective birthday email to incorporate into your email marketing strategy.

Here are 10 tips to consider:

1. Take advantage of dynamic fields

Dynamic fields are specific HTML tags that allow you to automatically insert the user’s name within your email.

This feature is particularly important in birthday e-mails because it makes the message truly personal and unique.

Insert the dynamic field at the beginning of your greeting message, and perhaps emphasise the name using an interactive character.

What makes a greeting special is precisely the fact that it is addressed directly to us.

This makes us feel special and appreciated, and is certainly a great way to convince the user to continue reading the email.

2. Schedule entry date and time

The birthday e-mail is automatic, which means that you can schedule the date and time of arrival of your birthday message.

It sounds like a detail, but never more important than for this type of email is to pay attention to the day you set for sending!

Based on the type of your target audience and especially on your campaign reports, identify the times when your customers are most active and tend to open emails more regularly.

Avoid sending emails late in the evening, when a person might be busy celebrating with their family.

A good time to send your birthday email could be in the morning, between 10 a.m. and 12 noon.

Your message will be a cause for good cheer and will be even more engaging.

3. Give importance to the object

The subject line is an integral part of your email, which is why it should not be underestimated when creating an effective and valid greeting message for your customers.

L’importanza dell’oggetto sta nel fatto che anticipa ai tuoi utenti il contenuto della tua email.

It must be short, concise and powerful.

In your birthday e-mails, write a simple and short greeting already in the subject line and anticipate the discount percentage or the type of offer you intend to propose as a gift.

You can also play the surprise card, and bet on this to intrigue users to read on and open your email.

If your business sector lends itself to the use of informal language, you can also enrich the object with an emoji consistent with the birthday theme, such as a small gift pack or a streamer.

4. Make a personalised wish

When writing a greetings message, try to be original but above all to show closeness to the person you are addressing.

A personalised greeting message could make all the difference in an ocean of trite and overused words, and not just a simple ‘best wishes’.

Scegli un tono di voce adeguato in base al settore in cui la tua azienda opera e alla tipologia di clienti a cui ti rivolgi.

If, for example, you work in banking or insurance, try not to stray too far from a sincere but formal and polite greeting.

In the case where your sector involves strong customer contact and a high relational component, on the other hand, you can lean towards a more personal message and a nice-sounding greeting.

To make your message even more unique, choose a font that simulates handwriting and resembles what was once used for letters.

It will give your message a very personal touch.

5. Choose a party-themed email template

Whether you want to give your birthday email a more or less formal tone, choose a template that in terms of colours, graphics and structure is suitable for the purpose.

Make your email festive by favouring warm tones and bright colours, and include icons or images typical of the holidays: flowers, streamers, sparklers and gift wrapping will immediately catch the eye and let your recipient know what kind of email they are about to read.

6. Insert interactive content

Although the greeting message is certainly the heart of your birthday email, do not underestimate the importance of well-designed graphics and visual content that can enhance the engagement of the whole email.

To add a touch of movement and joy to your message, choose interactive content such as GIFs instead of static images.

GIFs and animated content increase the engagement of your birthday e-mails and make your message even more special.

7. Offer a discount code or premium service

There is no real birthday message without a gift.

To celebrate your customers, create unique discount codes, coupons or special offers for the occasion.

If your marketing goals are geared instead towards increasing conversions of one of your services, you might consider giving away a temporary upgrade to a premium version for the occasion.

In this way, you will allow paid features to be discovered by users, who may decide to keep the new services active even when the promotion expires.

You could also send users a coupon to use in your physical store, or offer a free gift on their next purchase.

8. Insert the link to your site or e-commerce

If you have an e-commerce, link the discounts directly to your platform by inserting the link in your birthday email.

This will allow you to have a more satisfying user experience, and will give your online shopping channel greater visibility.

You can also think about doing the same for your website, either by sending the link to specific content or as an invitation to take advantage of the discount code you offered.

9. Focus on the calls to action

Although this is not a commercial email, calls to action support the suggestion of discount codes and help the customer journey to your website or e-commerce platform.

When writing a call to action, always keep it short (two or three words at most) and try to use verbs that invite action such as ‘start’, ‘discover’, ‘choose’.

Here are some call-to-actions you could use for your birthday email:

• Discover the surprise
• Choose your gift
• Celebrate now
• Unwrap the gift

10. Use a digital signature

The ‘icing on the cake’ of your birthday email could be an authentic digital signature of the company CEO or another figure recognised as important and representative of your brand.

All greetings messages have a signature, and are sent by someone in the flesh.

Giving a precise face to the sender of the birthday email sent by your company will make your customers feel really important, especially if this face belongs to a prominent person.

The management of a company is always synonymous with authority, reliability and respect.

These characteristics will be conveyed by the digital signature at the end of your message, and will give additional importance and value to your email.

Birthday Emails: Automatic Flows

Marketing automation allows you to send personalised emails to users at specific times and based on the information that, with their permission, users provide you with when they decide to subscribe to your services.

Email automation also allows you to significantly reduce the operational time for creating and sending e-mails and thus devote yourself to other activities that are important for your business. With CPaaS rdcom, you can also create cross-channel communication flows that allow you to combine multiple channels, such as email and SMS, within the same customer journey.

There are several ways in which one or more automatic birthday e-mails can be set up.

Many people start thinking about their birthday long before the actual day, and this can work in favour of brands that can thus extend the duration of a tailor-made promotion and thus increase possible sales.

Here are some possibilities:

• Single email on exact day of birthday

Simple, effective, and suitable for all types of customers.

If you are still just starting out in the email marketing business, a good, easy-to-implement solution is to send a single greeting email on the exact day your customers’ birthday falls.

If you have a small customer list, characterised by people you perhaps know personally and who you are sure frequently open your e-mails, this stream might be for you.

• Double birthday email

Who wouldn’t like their birthday to last a week, or even a month?

To get maximum results from your email greetings, you could create a promotion lasting one, two, three or even four weeks and then communicate it at two different times.

In this case, make the first contact at a time in advance of your birthday offer, and thus prepare a fertile ground of trepidation and surprise to improve your customer relationship and stimulate purchases.

The second contact will, of course, take place on the exact day of the birthday.

To create it, simply follow the tips we have already seen together.

But what to do when the email is not read? It may happen that your e-mail is not opened or read on the day it arrives, and this risks wiping out all the efforts put into creating it.

There are, however, automatic flows that, starting from multichannel, allow you to overcome this problem and ensure that your birthday emails have the right visibility.

In this case, an excellent ally is SMS. Due to their ability to be read on average within 3 minutes after delivery, they can become a perfect reminder to open an email.

• Opening Reminder

Send an SMS to users who have not opened your email.

It could have been an oversight, an oversight, or simply a mistake.

SMS has a 98% open rate and is therefore the ideal tool to reach your audience.

In this case you can send an SMS to inform your customers that you have not forgotten their important day, and that indeed there is a gift waiting for them in their inbox.

• Reading Reminder

Your email was received and read correctly, but the user did not make use of the discount code available to him.

To urge him to take advantage of the opportunity, send a text message 1-2 days after the birthday trying to convey the great advantage he might be missing.

Remind your recipient that there is a discount code waiting for him/her, perhaps for a limited time because it was made just for that occasion.

• Reminders of up-selling and cross-selling

If your customer read your email and took advantage of the promotion you created for him, it means that everything went well and that you managed to achieve a conversion.

In this case you can be sure that you are dealing with a user interested in your products and willing to buy.

For even better results, you could send an SMS about a week after the birthday recommending to the user complementary or similar products to the one purchased or proposing an upgrade of the product or service in possession.

This type of message is very useful to improve customer engagement and really get the most out of your channels with respect to return on investment.

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Now that you have discovered the full potential of birthday e-mails and tips on how best to implement them, discover the new Automations section on CPaaS!
Cross-channel, management via API, statistics.