Architect Use Case: Birthday

Most of the time, a great deal of the marketing strategies focus on growth and revenue when building user journeys for cart abandonment, browse abandonment, cross-sell, etc. However, all can be achieved if your users are retained.

The more retained a user is, the lower your churn is. Just as you offer discounts, promotions, and exclusive deals to your users to gain more transactions and revenue, you can also send a thoughtful email on their birthday to make them feel valued and engaged, hence increasing retention.

You can use customized email templates or SMS messages with personalized content based on the customer value and life cycle including a voucher, and trigger it using the Dynamic Date feature on an annual basis.

You can create birthday journeys to show your users that you value them and offer incentives for this special day.

This article provides details about:

• Goals
• Ingesting the Birthday Attribute
• Requirements
• Creating a Birthday Journey

Goals

While retaining your users, you can improve your average order value and revenue through the incentives you offer in your journeys. Each targeted and converted user will help you to:

• Increase retention,
• Convert inactive customers,
• Convert first-time buyers to active customers,
• Decrease churn rate,
• Boost average order value,
• Increase revenue.

Ingesting the Birthday Attribute

Birthday is one of the user’s attributes that you can pass from the platforms. You can check the methods below to ingest the Birthday attribute and decide how you will proceed:

• On your website, you can have a custom user attribute included in the Insider Object to pass this data to Insider.
• If you collect birthday information on your mobile app, you can pass the same birthday attribute via SDK. 
• If you have users' birthday information in your CRM, you can ingest this user data.
• If you have a list of users including their birthdays, you can upload a contact list. 

Requirements

Before creating a Birthday journey for your users, make sure that you meet the requirements below:

• You must have Insider Tag integration completed on your website.
• If you have a mobile app, you must have SDK Integration completed.
• Before starting to use any channel in your journeys, integrations for the respective channels should be completed. Depending on the channels you want to use in your journeys, additional integrations might be required.
• User's birthday information should be passed to Insider.

Creating a Birthday Journey

Any user who is using the services and products from any vertical will be glad when their birthday is celebrated by the brand they like. Especially when you offer them incentives and discounts, and you do this annually!

Take, for example, James. It's his birthday today! He used your agency to book a trip before. Why not drive him to use your agency one more time? You send an email to celebrate his birthday that offers a voucher for his next booking.

If he is not reachable by email, you can try reaching out to him through the SMS channel. Meanwhile, make sure to send him messages only during the white hours using the wait until a time slot feature!

1. Select On Dynamic Date starter

On Dynamic Date is a starter that triggers the journey based on the user’s date type attributes or date type event parameters.

• Select your custom birthday attribute in the Dynamic Date starter. 
• Activate the Repeat Annually option to ignore the year of the date for each user’s birthday. 
• You can take users on the journey and send a message before their birthdays when you select the Before the Date option. For example, you can send a voucher code 7 days before the user's birthday to give them time to redeem the voucher code while the birthday is coming. 

2. Build your journey

You can follow the steps below to build your birthday journey.

1. Add the Wait element

On Dynamic Date triggers users once a day at 01.00 (GMT+0). 

• Add the Wait element accordingly after the starter element while you are designing your journey flow so that you do not send messages at white hours based on your time zone.
• You can also add the Wait Until a Time Slot to your journey to proceed users to the channels step in a certain period. 

2. Filter your users

You can add a Check Conditions element to filter users for different paths on the journey flow. With Check Conditions, you can:

• Segment users based on their previous purchase history, including frequency, value, and product categories.
• Segment users based on their language.
• Segment users based on website interaction.
• Segment users based on demographic data such as age, gender, or location.
• Segment users based on their channel reachability.
• Segment users based on any attribute or event parameters you want. 

3. Check reachability

Before sending a birthday email/message, you can check if users are reachable on that channel. If not, you can try another channel on another path. With Check Reachability, you can:

• Assess users' reachability on selected channels, they receive your messages from the prioritized channels if they are reachable.
• Prevent users from dropping out of the journey and ensure that they are directed to the appropriate path based on their reachability.
• Optimize your budget and resources to the correct channels. 

4. Reach your users via the Best Channel

You can use the Next Best Channel element in your birthday use case to significantly enhance the effectiveness of your campaign when you ensure that your message reaches the recipient through the most optimal channel. You optimize reachability since the NBC element considers various factors such as user preferences, past engagement behavior, and channel effectiveness to determine the best channel for reaching each recipient, enhance engagement when you tailor your birthday messages to each recipient's preferred channel, maximize conversion since the NBC element helps optimize conversion rates and delivers messages in the channels where users are most likely to respond positively, adapt to user behavior since the NBC element continuously adapts to changing user dynamics and channel effectiveness and when you minimize wasted resources on less effective channels and allocate resources more efficiently to channels that deliver the highest returns, you will improve campaign return on investment (ROI).

5. Select your channels

When adding channels, you should consider the following factors:

• User preferences,
• Channel effectiveness,
• Audience segmentation,
• Reachability.

For the Birthday use case, both email and SMS channels are highly recommended for reaching out to users on their special day. While email offers highly personalized, visually appealing messages and convenient delivery for special birthday offers, SMS is a direct channel, that provides immediate delivery and high engagement. When you use email and SMS channels in your birthday campaigns, you can leverage the unique strengths of each channel to create a comprehensive and impactful user experience that enhances user engagement, fosters brand loyalty, and drives conversions.

Creating content and sending the initial message 

After deciding on the channel you want to use for birthday, you can start designing your content. Birthday email or SMS notifications create valuable moments for users and build loyalty to your brand. 

• You can personalize your messages based on user properties. Especially using their first name in the messages will help you personalize your content.
• You can also give some special offers or discounts to new users to engage them.
• You can give some special offers or discounts to new users to engage them. 
• Make sure the content design is consistent with the design on your website and mobile app.
• Make sure images and GIFs have high resolution. 

You can follow these best practices to compose your email:

• Use preheaders to spark curiosity and encourage recipients to open the email that hints at the content inside.
• Highlight the benefits of opening the email and redeeming the birthday offer in the subject line to entice recipients to take action.
• Use subject lines to create a sense of urgency and encourage immediate action from recipients.
• Including the recipient's name to grab their attention in the subject lines and make the email feel more personalized.
• Incorporate emojis in both the subject line and preheader to make the email stand out in recipients' inboxes and convey excitement.

Below you can see a content example:
Subject: "Happy Birthday, [Name]! Your Exclusive Offer Inside. 🎉"
Preheader: "🎂 Birthday Wishes, [Name]! Enjoy Your Special Gift Today!"

You can follow these best practices to compose your SMS message:

• SMS messages should be short and to the point. Avoid lengthy content that may overwhelm recipients.
• Use dynamic content to personalize messages with the recipient's name and birthday details for a more engaging experience.
• Include limited-time offers or expiry dates to create urgency and encourage recipients to take immediate action.
• Provide a clear call-to-action (CTA) that prompts recipients to redeem their birthday offer or visit your website.
• Show appreciation to recipients for their continued support and loyalty to your brand.

Below you can see a content example:
Message: "🌟 Your Birthday Gift Expires Soon! 🎁 Get 25% off all purchases today only. Don't miss out, shop now!"
Message: "🎂 Happy Birthday, [Name]! 🎉 Claim your 30% birthday discount now. Tap to shop and save!"

Follow-up messages and Best Practices

After sending the initial message, you can control if the users complete your desired goal such as purchasing the item, adding the item to the cart, etc. after a while. You can add a Wait element to give time to users, then you can add the Check Conditions element to check if the users perform the specified action. 

You can follow these common practices for messaging frequency for birthday use cases: 

• Sending a single birthday message on the recipient's birthday is a common practice. This message typically includes a personalized greeting, birthday wishes, and any special offers or discounts.
• You may send a follow-up reminder if the recipient has not redeemed their birthday offer within a certain timeframe, such as a week after their birthday. This reminder gently prompts the recipient to take advantage of the offer before it expires.
• Sending an annual birthday greeting is a standard practice for maintaining customer engagement and loyalty. When you send a birthday message every year, you can show appreciation for your users' continued support and strengthen your relationship.
• Providing recipients with the option to opt out of receiving birthday messages is a best practice to respect their preferences and privacy. Including an unsubscribe link in birthday messages allows recipients to easily manage their communication preferences.
• Segmenting recipients based on their response to birthday messages can help optimize messaging frequency. For example, active users who redeem their birthday offers promptly may receive additional perks or exclusive rewards, while inactive users may receive fewer messages or no further birthday communications.

You can create your birthday use cases following these best practices:

• Personalize birthday messages with the recipient's name and birthday date to make them feel special and valued.
• Send birthday messages on the recipient's actual birthday to maximize the impact and relevance of the communication.
• Include special offers, discounts, or birthday gifts in the birthday message to incentivize recipients to engage with your brand and make a purchase.
• Include a clear and compelling call-to-action (CTA) in the birthday message, prompting recipients to redeem their offer or visit your website to make a purchase.
• Ensure that birthday messages are mobile-responsive and optimized for viewing on smartphones and tablets, as many recipients may access their messages on mobile devices.
• Obtain consent from recipients before sending birthday messages and provide an option to opt out of further communications and comply with relevant data protection regulations, such as GDPR or CCPA. 
• Segment your audience based on their birthday date and preferences to tailor the content and timing of birthday messages for maximum relevance and effectiveness.
• Test different messaging formats, offers, and timing strategies to optimize the performance of birthday messages over time. Analyze metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates to identify areas for improvement and refine your approach accordingly.
• Follow up with recipients who redeem their birthday offers with a thank you message, expressing gratitude for their continued support and encouraging further engagement with your brand.
• Use birthday messages as an opportunity to foster long-term relationships with users. Offer them personalized recommendations, exclusive perks, and ongoing communication beyond their birthday.

4. Launch your journey

If you are all set, launch your journey in test status to conduct a test or in active status to go live.

Example flow:

Here you can take a look at some of the birthday journey flow examples.

• A simple birthday journey:
• A more advanced birthday journey: