As my birthday rolled around this year, I was anticipating an inbox full of emails extending birthday discounts, deals, perks, & more. Surprisingly, I only received one such email and the offer was nothing extraordinary. What’s a birthday girl to do? I was left puzzled as to why such a small number of businesses took advantage of this golden opportunity.

My friend Nick has a birthday around the same time. I asked him if he had received any birthday wishes from companies that he has email relationships with. Nick sent me the email below as an example of a birthday email that he was excited to receive. Golf Galaxy had collected enough information from Nick during the sign up process, or update process, that they were able to send him a birthday greeting and personalize it using his first name. By addressing Nick and sending the email on his actual birthday, they made an immediate connection with him. The fact that Nick said he would use this discount also means that Golf Galaxy is sending relevant offers.

There are a few things that Golf Galaxy could have done differently creatively. They should have used snippet text, moved the call to action above the fold, etc. However, the general look and feel of the email is clean and clear and it gets the message across (if you download all of the images and scroll down!) Aside from a few design changes, Golf Galaxy is doing a great job using the information that they have on their customers and sending them timely, relevant offers.

Remember, when collecting opt-in information, ask your customers for personal information for marketing efforts such as birthday offers. It is also a great idea to allow your customers to update their own information at any time. This way you can collect that birthday later on if you missed it during the initial opt-in. Connecting and engaging with customers will always help you increase your sales. Knowing how to do this with special offers and incentives using data you already have will only increase your email marketing ROI.

Tags: birthday email, email marketing

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 17th, 2008 at 1:51 pm and is filed under Best Practice, Creative & Design, General - Misc., Industry Trends, Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.