Birthday Anniversary
Learn how Birthday Anniversary triggers work
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The Birthday Anniversary workflow is a great way to engage your loyal customers by triggering an action on or around their birthday. This guide explains how the system decides when to create these birthday events, which can then be used to trigger workflows.
There are two main ways birthday events can be triggered. The method used depends on how your Birthday Anniversary metric is configured.
First of the Month
This is the default setup. With this method, we generate birthday events in a batch on the first day of each month.
How it works
On the first day of the month (e.g., July 1st), the system finds all customers who have a birthday at any point during that month (e.g., any day in July). It then creates a birthday event for all of them at once. This event can then be used to trigger a workflow.
Example
On August 1st, birthday events will be created for all customers with a birthday in August.
What about new customers or recent sign-ups?
If a customer provides their birthday after the first of the month, our system has a catch-up process.
Let's say the events for July birthdays were created on July 1st. On July 10th, a new customer signs up and provides their birthday: July 25th. As soon as they provide their birthday, the system checks if it falls within the current month. Since it does, their birthday event is created right away on July 10th. They won't have to wait until next year to be included.
Days in Advance
This method gives you the flexibility to trigger the birthday event a specific number of days before a customer's actual birthday.
How it works
You can configure a "days in advance" number (e.g., 7 days). Every day, the system checks for customers whose birthday is exactly that many days away and creates a birthday event for them.
Example
If you've configured a 7-day advance trigger, then on September 3rd, the system will find all customers with a birthday on September 10th and create their birthday event. If the advance period is set to 0 days, the event is created on the customer's actual birthday.
What about new customers or recent sign-ups?
With this method, timing is important. The daily check will automatically include any new customers. However, if a customer signs up after their birthday event trigger date has already passed, they will have to wait until the following year.
Example
Your system is set to trigger events 7 days in advance. A customer's birthday is on October 20th, which means their event is scheduled to be created on October 13th.
- If they sign up on October 12th, they're in the system in time! Their event will be created on October 13th.
- If they sign up on October 15th, the trigger date has already passed. No event will be created for them this year, but they will be included in the process for next year.