Do you ask your customers for their date of birth when they register on the website? If so, do you use it? This famous, very personal data is often collected but very little used.
However, it is an important marketing and loyalty lever, which brings the company and its customer closer together. What are the best practices to put in place to make the most of this information?
This is what o2 will discuss in the following article as a leading digital agency in Dubai.
Why Celebrate Your Customers' Birthdays?
The date of birth is a frequently requested information when creating an account on an e-commerce website. However, only some e-retailers use this data.
However, implementing a marketing action based on the customer’s birthday has several advantages:
● Customer recognition of the brand.
● Humanization of customer relations.
● Purchase incentive.
● Restarting contact with the customer.
In the era of social networks and the dehumanization of customer contact through the web, Internet users still want to have a human and personalized relationship with brands. Customers want to be recognized, followed, and rewarded for their loyalty.
What better occasion than their birthday to make them feel their importance to the company?
How To Set Up a Marketing Action From The Date of Birth?
This may seem obvious, but you should already ask the customers for their date of birth when they register on the e-commerce website. Make sure to use it later, birthday communications are becoming more and more common. If the Internet user gives you this information (even more so if it is not a mandatory field), they will expect to receive something on the big day.
Once you have decided to use this information, you need to plan the type of message sent and its content.
As a digital agency in Dubai, we recommend businesses create personalized birthday communications to engage customers effectively.
Message Content: Discount or Gift?
It is traditional to offer something for someone’s birthday. In birthday marketing emails, two types of offers are usually used:
● A discount with a purchase.
● or a small gift (free product).
The value perceived by the customer is very different, and so is the strategy. The conditional discount aims to “force” a purchase, with the risk that the customer will not consider it a real “present” and will not use it. While the gift, even minimal, does not generate a direct purchase but can provoke additional purchases when it is collected, or rekindle the relationship of trust with the brand.
A different strategy can be implemented depending on the type of customer: is he loyal? If so, a gift can have a greater impact by thanking him for his loyalty. If not, an interesting discount can restart a purchase process.
So adapt the type of birthday gift to the type of customer but also to the type of products you sell. It’s up to you to evaluate whether giving a small product or a gift voucher without a minimum purchase amount will impact your business. You can also do A/B testing, by offering different offers to similar customer types to see the best return and adapt your strategy.
A Multichannel Birthday?
Do you have one or more stores in addition to an e-commerce website? O2 digital agency in Dubai recommends you to offer a multichannel birthday to the customer, that is to say that the offer received will be valid both online and in store. He will thus be able to choose the channel best suited to his consumption habits.
To go even further in segmentation, if you only have one store, you can send a different communication to customers who are used to ordering online and picking up in store, or who buy on site and whose famous date you have retrieved (by loyalty card for example). Offering something during the customer’s physical visit brings the human relationship between the company and consumers even closer.
How To Write The Message Text?
Take care with the subject, the writing and the personalization of the message. The basis is to personalize with the name of the person (first name or last name according to your brand image). You can also personalize by indicating the exact age of the person.
As a digital agency in Dubai, we suggest working carefully on the tone and personalization of your birthday emails to reflect your brand’s image.
The email must reflect the positioning, the image of the company, work on it carefully. Also, do not hesitate to change it every year, because the customer will certainly remember if the image, the text and the offer were identical last year. It is a loyalty technique, so you risk wishing the person a happy birthday several years in a row if everything goes well, prove to him that you are innovating! Or you can plan different email templates depending on the first, second, third etc. year of birthday wishes.
Also, make sure that you can sustain this marketing strategy for several years. Wouldn’t you feel “betrayed” if a friend forgot you on your birthday? Likewise, once you have started this recognition process with the customer, don’t forget them! Otherwise, they will quickly forget you.
A Different Message Depending on Age?
You can also make different gifts depending on the age of the person. Why not make a special gift for 20th, 30th, 40th, 50th, 60th etc., for example.
Depending on your business, if your customer base is very broad, you can offer different communication depending on the age group as well. We don’t necessarily address people aged 18-25 in the same way as we do people aged 40-50, or we don’t offer them the same thing.
The date of birth therefore allows for very advanced segmentation and personalization.
Is It Okay To Celebrate Something Other Than The Client's Birthday?
The anniversary of the creation of the company or the customer’s first order are other opportunities to communicate! Loyalty comes from a humanized and consistent customer relationship. It is not only a question of pushing for sales, but also of recognizing the customer’s participation in the success of the company! Just like in management, a simple “Thank you” can go a long way in human relations. So don’t just focus on commercial newsletters, and take advantage of every opportunity to get closer to your customer, whether by offering them a gift, a discount, or simply asking their opinion.
At O2 digital agency in Dubai, we understand how crucial it is to implement a comprehensive strategy that engages customers on multiple touchpoints.
If you’re having trouble putting yourself in the customer’s shoes or coming up with ideas for anniversary communications and if you would like to be supported in implementing such a loyalty strategy, our marketing team will help you write messages, while our graphic designers create visuals that your customers will not forget.
Let’s build something great