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Birthday and Anniversary Template

Send automated birthday and anniversary emails

Birthday and Anniversary Template

Personalized birthday and anniversary emails are among the highest-performing automated messages. They feel personal, arrive at a meaningful time, and often include a special offer that drives conversions. Mailnaptic's Birthday/Anniversary template makes it easy to set up date-based automations.

What the template includes

  1. Trigger: Date-based — fires when a contact's date field matches the current date.
  2. Send email: A celebratory message with a personalized greeting and optional offer.

Prerequisites

To use this template, your contacts must have a date-type custom field that stores their birthday or anniversary date. To set this up:

  1. Go to Organization Settings > Custom Fields.
  2. Create a new custom field with the type Date and name it (e.g., "Birthday" or "Anniversary").
  3. Populate the field for your contacts — via import, form submission, or manual entry.

Customizing the email

Birthday and anniversary emails should feel warm and personal:

  • Subject line: "Happy Birthday, {{first_name}}!" or "Celebrating your anniversary with us!"
  • Content: A festive design with a personal greeting. Keep the email short and celebratory.
  • Offer: Include a special discount, free gift, or exclusive perk. Birthday emails with offers have significantly higher redemption rates.
  • Expiration: Give the offer a clear expiration date (e.g., "Valid for 7 days") to create gentle urgency.

Extending the template

You can enhance the birthday automation with additional steps:

  • Reminder follow-up: Add a delay of 5 days and a second email reminding them their birthday offer is about to expire.
  • Condition on redemption: If you track offer redemption via site events, add a condition to skip the reminder for contacts who already redeemed.
  • Pre-birthday teaser: Send a "Something special is coming" email a few days before the birthday.

Anniversary variations

The same template works for various anniversary types:

  • Subscription anniversary: Celebrate the date the contact signed up. Use the contact's created_at date.
  • Purchase anniversary: Mark the anniversary of a customer's first purchase.
  • Milestone anniversaries: Send special emails at 1 year, 2 years, 5 years, etc.

Best practices

  • Send the email on the actual date, not before or after. Timing is what makes these emails special.
  • Use merge fields to personalize the greeting with the contact's name.
  • Keep the design festive but on-brand. Use celebratory imagery without going overboard.
  • Make the offer easy to redeem — a single click or an auto-applied discount code.
  • Test your date field formatting to ensure the automation triggers on the correct date.

Birthday and anniversary emails build emotional connection with your audience and consistently deliver above-average engagement and conversion rates.

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