Creating and sending birthday automation flows can help your brand scale a personalized SMS program. You can collect subscriber birthdays and store that data in subscriber profiles as custom properties to send date-triggered automations to subscribers.
In this article, we'll discuss you through how to collect birthdays from subscribers and guide you through how to build a date-triggered automation flow.
Gathering Subscriber Birthdays
Before we get started, let's refresh how custom properties are collected with Popups. For a more in-depth look at this process, see here for desktop or here for mobile.
- Within the Form card, you can add a question to your popup.
- Select the Add Question button, and choose Month and day. Their response will be added to their subscriber profile under Custom Properties.
- Within the first field titled Month and day question, craft your question copy (for example: when is your birthday?).
- Under Subscriber property, add the property name you are collecting by either creating a new property or selecting an existing property. You can think of the subscriber property as the main subject of the question (for example: if you ask subscribers when their birthday is, the subscriber property could be "Subscriber_Birth_Dates").
- Be sure to save your popup by selecting the Save button in the upper-right corner. To activate your popup, toggle the Active/Inactive bar in the upper-right.
Build a Date-Triggered Automation Flow
- From your Postscript dashboard, select Messaging, then select Automations.
- Select Create Automation in the upper-right corner. Choose Create Automation Flow.
- Choose Create a new automation, then select Create flow.
- When defining your automation properties, select the dropdown below Trigger event or property. Choose Subscriber date property.
- Under Property name, select the dropdown and choose the subscriber property you've chosen for your subscriber custom property collection (i.e. Subscriber_Birth_Dates).
- Set your send time (Tip! You may consider adjusting your send time according to when your susbcribers are most engaged. For example, in the evening).
- Continue adjusting automation properties and building your flow as desired, saving as needed.
Need Some Inspo?
We've got you covered! In this section, we'll share message copy and incentives to consider when building a birthday automation.
| Message Copy and Incentive | Why it works |
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Shop name: Pssssstt... a little birdie told us it's someone special's birthday today. AKA YOU!!!! 👑
To celebrate you, here's a coupon for 30% CashBack on your next purchase 👉 pscrpt.io/12873
Enjoy your day, birthday baddie 💅 |
Imagine getting an exclusive birthday gift or offer that's JUST FOR YOU from your favorite brand. This message feels personalized and cuts the noise of traditional SMS marketing. CashBack is a great incentive to offer subscribers that protects your bottomline while still offering subscribers a valuable gift. |
|
Shop name: 🎶Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday dear {first_name}...🎶
We'll spare you the whole song, just know that our team at {shop_name} is wishing you a very happy birthday. Thanks for being a member of our community ❤️ |
Beyond this being a highly personalized automation in nature, adding a {first_name} merge tags allows you to take personalization a step further.
While this message does not include an incentive, it clearly conveys gratitude for this customer too help build affinity for the brand. |
What's Next?
- Everyday, Postscript crawls your shop data to find subscribers that have a value associated with a date-specific custom property (for example, "Subscriber_Birth_Dates").
- When Postscript finds subscribers that do have a value associated with a date-specific custom property, it will look for birthday values that match the current date.
- When the app matches a date custom property with the current date, Flow Builder will enroll those subscribers into the birthday automation and trigger the flow according to the Send time parameter configured in your automation properties.
Get Support
Have questions? Please feel free to reach out to our wonderful Support team at support@postscript.io or via live chat. You can also submit a support request here!
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