We all loved the class singing in chorus on our birthdays, and our inboxes are no different than those days as birthday wishes from brands start piling up. As a responsible brand seeking to establish meaningful relationships with your customers, being a part of their happiness is a must. Birthday emails are your opportunity to convey the best wishes as well as a gift to your loyal customers with some amazing deals and value additions. In this article, we shall go through some tips from top HTML email developers on how to send high-converting birthday emails. Let’s get started.

Why Should You Send Birthday Emails

Before we move on towards best practices, I would like to share a few reasons why you should send birthday emails in the first place. Yes, your customers will appreciate them, but here’s how they impact your business as found by Experian:

• You can achieve 481% higher transaction rates as compared to the promotional messages.
• Birthday emails help earn upto 342% higher revenue when compared to promotional emails.
• The unique click rates are 179% higher for birthday emails than for promotional messages.

When to Send Birthday Emails for Maximum Conversions

To start with, it is necessary to get the consent of your subscribers before sending them birthday emails. You can ask for their birthdates using pulse surveys and opt-in forms. Below are the different time frames when you can schedule birthday emails:

• Birthday Month: Everyone likes birthday countdown quotes, and letting your subscribers know right from the beginning of the birthday month can give you the early bird advantage.
• Birthday: This is the day when you should definitely reach out to them and offer exclusive benefits.
• After Birthday: Reaching out later might work for you with a good strategy, but it’s not done widely.

Setting Up Birthday Email Automation Workflows

You can send upto 2 or 3 emails as a part of the birthday email series. The pre-birthday emails, as well as the messages sent on the actual birth date, should be personalized and include traits similar to promotional messages with a birthday theme. You can also send a post-birthday message so that your customers don’t forget to redeem the offer. All of them should include a compelling CTA button clear instructions regarding the offer in minimum words.

What to Include in Your Birthday Emails

To improve your conversion rates, you can follow these tips:

Use Great Subject Lines and Hero Image

Subject lines and hero images are two of the most influential parts of email copy, and you should lay emphasis on making them attractive. Remember that you will be competing with all other businesses as well as their professional acquaintances, so subject lines will play an important role in shaping the success of your message. In the below example, you can’t see how Pizza Hut used an excellent hero image that combines effortlessly with the freebie.

Personalize The Message

As far as the email copy is concerned, I recommend keeping the word count as low as possible. Use dynamic fields to insert the customer’s name in the subject line, “to” field, and the email copy. Including the recipient’s name in the subject improves the chances of your message getting opened and increases your revenue by up to 760%, finds Campaign Monitor. You can also include other personal details like hobbies and birth date based discount coupons to make your email relevant. Here’s an example from none other than Facebook:

Offer Irresistible Deals, Free Shipping, And Coupons

Now, this is where you can use a few time tested tactics. To begin with, you can send your customers a gift in the form of a discount that is conveyed either in the dollar value or as a percentage, whichever is higher. You can also include free shipping to make the deal more convincing. In the below example, you can see how they have used a percentage discount offer in coupon:

I also recommend sending time-bound offers to insti a sense of urgency. Giving extra time to utilize the offer improves your odds of making a sale. Have a look at this example from Puma, which also contains a personalized coupon code:

Another thing that I would recommend to our readers is to provide options within the email as sending personalized product recommendations is something you do all the time. It improves your conversion rates as your readers can directly land on the product page as opposed to browsing your website. Take a look at this example by Jewelry.

Summing Up

Collecting your subscribers’ birth dates is a must as you shouldn’t miss any chance of connecting with them. High converting birthday emails have a few characteristics in common: A clear CTA button, a discount offer, engaging copy, and product recommendations. Your communication over the course of time will provide relevant details regarding their preferences to help develop your email copy. We expect birthday gifts, so make sure you are offering one and complement it with value additions like free shipping or expedited shipping. Keep the copy short and sound genuinely enthusiastic. I hope you find this article on sending high-converting birthday emails helpful.

Author Bio

Kevin George is the head of marketing at Email Uplers, that specializes in crafting beautiful Email Templates, PSD to Email conversion, and Mailchimp Email Templates. Kevin loves gadgets, bikes & jazz, and he breathes email marketing. He enjoys sharing his insights and thoughts on email marketing best practices on email marketing blog.