There are occasions when your customers and prospects would be really pleased to receive marketing emails! Birthday and anniversary emails can be very powerful for lead nurturing and retention, and easily be automated in Marketo.
What’s the purpose of birthday and anniversary emails?
Whether you’re looking to send anniversary emails, like sign up or first purchase, or a simple birthday message – Not only will you flatter your contacts on their special day, but you will also strengthen the relationship. Especially on their birthday they’re already expecting mails, and be happy to open them. First purchase anniversary emails for example, can be a nice memory and surprise. In both cases, your customers and prospects won’t feel spammed, giving you the opportunity to re-engage.
What kind of content should be sent?
It’s a happy day, so be colorful and joyful! Moreover, a birthday is the best time to treat someone, isn’t it?
Personalized emails drive higher engagement — since you know it is their anniversary or birthday, make sure to address this in your subject and email content.
Example: “Your anniversary is coming up next week…”, or “We have known each other for a year…”, “…here is a little gift to celebrate!”
But what’s an anniversary without a gift? This is a great occasion to thank your client or prospect by giving them a special anniversary offer.
If you’re using this for subscription renewal, it’s a great opportunity to send out a customer satisfaction survey. If they’re happy with your service you can instantly pass them over to your Sales team to handle the renewal. Otherwise you can alert Sales that your customer isn’t fully satisfied.
How can this be done in Marketo?
To get the most out of your birthday and anniversary emails, you should start to gather information earlier. You obviously won’t be able to send birthday emails without knowing the date; make sure to ask for it in your subscription form. For anniversary emails you should track and store milestones, such as subscription or first purchase (from your CRM), and sync them into Marketo. Nothing is easier than sending automated emails using the platform. Marketo designed an interesting method using the Date Token in the Wait step. At Perkuto, we went a little further, making your birthday and anniversary campaign accurate and easy.
Perkuto method: After creating and designing your email, create a Smart Campaign and follow these steps:
1. In Smart List: Date of Birth in future: “0 days” (to make it run on the birthday date for example)
Tip: For a renewal or milestone anniversary you can use a custom Date field such as “subscription date” and choose to set “in future X days” to allow some time for your subscriber to think about a renewal, or to enjoy the offer.
2. Use a Send Email flow action with your tokenized email
3. In Schedule, set the recurrence on a daily basis.
It’s important to use the Smart Campaign Settings to limit leads from running multiple times in the same flow. For example use “Each lead can run through flow once every 12 months”.
Birthday and anniversary emails are a great way to keep in touch with your customers and prospects, while maintaining a happy and positive relationship. Think of other ways to keep in touch, without sending too many offers; add your ideas in the comments below and subscribe to our blog for more tips and tricks.
