If your Loyalty Program asks customers for their date of birth, you can give them something when it comes round and try to get their wallet to say happy birthday. Both are set up in one place: the Program’s Notifications tab, under Birthdays.
When it happens
At about 8am on the day, UK time, without you doing anything. That is the point of it: the message reaches the customer while they are still deciding what to do with their birthday, rather than after they have already walked in.
If anything stops that happening, the same thing happens the next time you scan their card, so a customer who comes in is never missed. Nobody gets a birthday twice: whichever gets there first is the one that counts, and the other quietly does nothing.
The 8am is UK time all year round. There is no separate setting for it and nothing to switch on: if the Program asks for a date of birth and you have chosen what the day gives, it runs.
Birthday stamp or reward
- No free stamp or reward. Use this if the birthday is a card rather than a treat.
- A free stamp on their card. An ordinary stamp: it counts towards their next reward like any other, and if it fills the card they can use the reward straight away.
- A free reward, ready to use. A whole reward, on top of whatever they are collecting. It does not change how many stamps they have, so they keep working towards the next one.
Whichever you choose, it is given once per customer per year. A second scan on the same day, or a scan a week later, changes nothing.
Birthday notification message
Turn on "Send birthday messages to your customers" and write what it should say, or leave our wording in place. Up to 120 characters. The message goes onto their loyalty card, and we ask Apple Wallet or Google Wallet to show it. As with every message, the wallet decides whether anything appears on the phone, and neither Apple nor Google tells anybody what happened.
The switch comes first on the block, and the two fields under it only appear once it is on: with birthday messages switched off there is nothing to word and nothing to give. Whatever you had chosen is kept while it is off, so turning it back on finds your wording and your stamp or reward exactly as you left them.
A birthday message is not counted by the one-message-a-day limit, in either direction: it is never held back by it, and it never uses up a customer’s limit for the day. It is sent once per customer per year.
What it needs
- The Program has to ask for a date of birth. Turn on "Date of birth" under Data collection on the Program’s Offer tab. Only customers who joined after that, and were asked, have one.
- The reward and the birthday message both work on every plan.
Switching the date of birth question back off stops the whole birthday, including the message. Birthdays then shows one warning and no settings at all, because there is nothing for them to act on. Nothing is thrown away: turn the question back on and your wording, your stamp or reward and the switch are all as you left them.
Where to see what happened
A birthday stamp or reward appears in your Audit Log as "Birthday stamp" or "Birthday reward", by System, against that customer. The message appears in the same log, marked "Birthday message": choose Messages in the Event box to see it beside every other message that has gone out.
Every customer is given one birthday treat a year and sent one birthday message a year, whether the morning run or a scan got there first, however many times their card is scanned on the day, and however many tills you have open.