Introduction
Sending marketing or promotional messaging on a customers birthday (or during their birthday month) is very much a staple of most ecommerce businesses and a simple way of making users feel connected with your brand. Often this is done via email but utilising mobile channels such as push, in-app and inbox will allow you to reach your app users on channels most used by them.
Adding birthday messaging to your set of mobile marketing strategies is a simple way of interacting with your customer base in a personal and relevant manner.
Benefits:
- Increase engagement
- Increase revenue
- Increase loyalty
Required Features:
- Emarsys SDK
- Deep links
- Inbox - if using multiple channels
High level use case flow
Create the segments
A combined segment will be required to facilitate this use case made up of the following.
Segment 1
- A Contact segment where birthday (or equivalent) ‘Is today (ignoring the year)’.
Segment 2
- A Mobile Engage segment where Push Notifications are ‘Enabled’.
- Link to the correct app.
This will capture users whose birthday is today as well as those users with Push Notifications turned on in the app.
For more information on combining segments, click here.
Create the Push Notification
- Link to the correct app.
- Link to Automation Center as the recipient source.
- Add the content (birthday message/offer and relevant personalization such as
FirstName
). - Launch.
Consider adding images or GIFs to your Push Notification via the Rich Push option on the preview screen. As it is a birthday message it will be a better customer experience to make it more interactive and deserving of a special occasion.
Segmentation
- Create a contact segment where birthday (or equivalent field as per your account) equals ‘Is today (ignoring the year)'.

- Create a Mobile Engage segment where Mobile Push Notifications equals ‘Enabled’ and is linked to the appropriate app.

- Create a Combined Segment of the two previously created Segments, using an ‘AND’ operator.

Push Notification creation
- From the Mobile Engage Push Messages tab click Create Push Message to begin creating the notification.
- Fill in the general settings, giving the Push Notification a name, linking it to the app, selecting Recipient source as ‘Automation Center’.

- On the Content Creation page type your message directly into the phone preview pane.
- Click on the sidebar to the left of the preview screen to include functionality such as Action Buttons or deep links.
- Add Action Buttons in the ‘Tap Actions’ tab (if desired).
- Add Deep Links in the ‘Custom Data’ tab (recommended).

- Once complete click Ready to Launch and your message will be available for selection in the relevant Interactions program.
Automation Center Program
- Add a recurring filter node running every day at a specified time (test which times get the best engagement potentially the evening for example when people have more time on their phones may be optimal).
- Add a Segment node targeted at your combined segment.
- Add a Mobile Engage Push Node and select your created Birthday Push message.
- Once complete, Activate the campaign.

Multi-Channel Additions - Inbox Birthday Primer
- Add a recurring filter as with the standard Birthday program outlined above.
- Alter your original segment so you look for users whose birthday is in exactly 7 days (or equivalent length or time, 3 days as an option).
- Add a Mobile Engage Inbox message.
An Inbox needs to be created in the app. This is done by the client, giving full control of the look and feel. Some additional calls need to be placed to send and accept Inbox messages. These can be found documented in the SDK here. To create an Inbox message see the user guides here.
- Add a Wait Node that waits for 7 days (or equivalent time you added in the Segment) until the day of the customers birthday.
- Add a Mobile Engage Push node ensure the message deep links to the users Inbox where they can access their birthday offer. Alter the messaging accordingly.

Multi-Channel Additions - In-app option
- Add a recurring filter as per previous programs.
- Alter your original segment so you look for users whose birthday is in exactly 7 days (or equivalent length of time you want to use as a primer).
- Add an In-app message node to the journey.
Create an in-app message that references the users upcoming birthday and reminds them to look out for their birthday message. Trigger the In-app on app:start so it is seen when the user opens the app. To create an in-app message see the user guide here.
- Add a Wait Node that waits for 7 days (or equivalent time you added in the Segment) until the day of the customers birthday.
- Add a Mobile Engage Push node ensure the message deep links to the users Inbox where they can access their birthday offer. Alter the messaging accordingly.
Experiment with a Push to In-app message on a users birthday as an alternative method. Create a Push message and an In-app and link the two together via Tap Actions. To get more information on how to do this see the end user guide here.
