What’s the one date everyone remembers?
Their birthday!

Events like Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and Mother’s Day come every year; you may not celebrate all of them, but you always have a special emotion for your birthday.

Even if millions of people share their birthdays on the same date, it still has a special place for every single one of them. Moreover, you may also have fond memories of your birthday parties celebrated with friends and family when you were a child. That’s how birthdays and anniversaries are memorable for all of us.

Apart from the emotional aspect, such special days also provide a clear opportunity for marketers to create a bond with their customers by offering gifts.

Sending special offers on birthdays and anniversaries

There are good reasons to treat your customers well on their birthday or a wedding anniversary.

A study by Vibes showed that almost 77% of mobile users have a significant impact on their brand affinity when they receive surprise points, birthday or anniversary greetings, and exclusive discounts.

As compared to promotional emails – personalized greetings also have a 481% higher transaction rate and generate 342% more revenue.

What type of gifts can you use?

Here are some of the lucrative options you can use to engage your customers and improve brand affinity:

Special deals

Special offers help you achieve quick results and valuable data if implemented correctly.

If you’re new to birthday or anniversary campaigns, start things off with exclusive discounts that shoppers can use during their birthday week.

For instance, you can let your customers take 20% of their purchases, or you can also create unique promo codes for your customers and track who’s redeeming your offers.

Free products

Freebies are a highly effective way of customer appreciation.

By offering a free gift item to your customers on their special day, you can show that your brand cares for them.

Besides, you can also give free samples of your products and get useful feedback in return.

Extra rewards

It’s the reality of loyalty programs that even if many customers sign up for them, not everyone will participate in all the programs they join.

If your program is suffering from low engagement rates, you can incorporate birthday or anniversary rewards to stir things up.

When implemented effectively, it can drive engagement among your customers and put your business back on track.

Surprise your customers

You can use the element of surprise to keep your customers on their toes.

Figure out which reward is the best option and surprise them during their birthday or anniversary month.

Creating a birthday/anniversary program

A birthday program is a useful tool to gain the attention of your customers – only if you use it correctly.

If you open an e-commerce website – try to recall how you have been asked to enter your birthday details? Perhaps, a dozen times?

And yet you only receive a few emails or mass-produced postcards from such companies on your birthday every year.

That’s because businesses fail to recognize the importance of creating a specialized birthday program and instead use generic methods to send birthday greetings to their customers.

Most of these greetings end up in the spam folder of your email, and the customers never even care to open them.

However, by creating a specialized birthday program, you can maximize customer engagement and increase your sales.

With personalized birthday greetings and freebies, you can convert one-time buyers into repeat customers, who can soon become your brand advocates.

Here are some essential pointers to create a great customer birthday program:

• Ask the day, month, and year of birth from your customers upon registration. While day and month is the minimum information you need, by knowing the year, you can also target special milestones like 21st, 25th or 30th birthdays, and so on.
• If you’re using a CRM system and the information is appropriate in context with the product you sell – you can also ask their partner’s or/and their children’s birthdays.

This additional info will give you more opportunities to target your customers in a year.

• Create a brand message and show your customers that you care. Besides sending birthday greetings or anniversary cards, give personalized discounts depending upon the purchase history of your customers.
• You can also use hand-written cards to send birthday or anniversary greetings; it will make your customers acknowledge your efforts and stay loyal to your brand.
• Infuse a little creativity and enclose a special offer within a greeting card to delight your customers. It will make them happy, and in turn, increase your brand value.

How NextBee helps you improve brand affinity?

NextBee uses an effective brand advocacy engine to increase word of mouth referrals to get your brand more loyal customers.

Here are its key components:

• Motivating programs
• Special offers to engage your customers
• Economical methods to spread brand awareness
• Quick and easy to integrate

Takeaway

Regardless of what you choose for a milestone, it’s more important to delight your customers not just during their birthday or anniversary but throughout the year.

Make sure your milestones can effectively affirm a customer’s identity and show how your brand cares for its customers.