It’s pretty self-evident that everybody loves to receive a gift on their birthday. As humans, we like to feel loved, especially on our birthday. Is there any reason why businesses can’t participate in this goodness?!? Start building lasting customer relationships by sending them a birthday gift.

How to Start a Birthday Club

Here are a few tips to set up your Birthday Club:

1) Create a Signup Form using Birthday Club Software

First off, here are the fields I would recommend.

Name– When you send them that message, put their name in it to make it a more personal message! Don’t let it come across as generic.

Birthday– Month and day only! If you decide to ask for their year of birth, you will drastically decrease the number of customers willing to sign up.

Choose at least one communication method: Email, Text (SMS), or Address–  It is important to have a way to communicate with your customers.  

2) Set Up a Birthday Marketing Program

Here are several ways to post the form to get the maximum amount of engagement.

Website– Post the form on your website. This typically can be done using a website plugin or an iFrame from your CMS. Consult with your website administrator for any help.

Facebook Tab– Adding a custom tab to your Facebook Business Page requires some developer knowledge or access to a CRM app that does this for you.  

Social Media– Make sure to take advantage of all your social media channels and periodically post a campaign to get more signups. The post should then link back to your website or Facebook tab for customers to fill out the mobile form.

SMS Keyword- You can have people text an SMS Keyword to join the Birthday Club.  An example would be text “Birthday” to 85775. You would then get a text back with further instructions. This method requires access to an SMS Marketing Software like CityGro.

Paper Forms- This one is for those of you that like more traditional methods. Create a good looking paper form that can be filled out in store. This requires some manual entry, but hey, it works well for some.

Digital Kiosk- If you use a digital kiosk for your loyalty program, make sure you have the birthday as a required field.

3) Create an Automated Birthday Message

Once you have customers joining your Birthday Club, you will need to make sure that they are going to get a birthday message. Creating an automated process will save you time, and still build solid relationships with your customers. Here are examples of common, but effective, campaigns:

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SMS Campaign- Text messages are great because you can be very precise on when they are going to receive and even read the message (90 percent of texts are read within the first 10 minutes). I would suggest to not send it to early in the morning —I typically schedule mine for 10:00 or 11:00 AM for the best results.

Example: “Happy Birthday (First Name) from (Business Name)! Hurry on in and receive a FREE (Offer). It’s our way of saying HBD! Excited to see you soon! Exp (Date)”

Email Campaign- Email campaigns allow you to be a little bit more creative. You still have some control over when they will read the message and you get a lot more room to work with!  

Mailer Campaign- If you were lucky enough to collect their full address, then mailer campaigns become an option. Since you can’t be as concise as to when customers will receive the mailer, make sure you keep the content more generic.  

Example: “We hear your birthday is just around the corner! Let’s celebrate with a FREE (Offer) from (Business Name).  

If you’ve mastered the Birthday Club, share your pro tips below! We’d love to hear what your business is doing to build participation in this marketing effort. You can also learn about other types of automated marketing by visiting www.citygro.com.