Audience Segmentation Strategies for Birthday Campaigns

The most effective marketing campaigns deliver the right message at the right time. For many brands, reaching out to customers (or their spouses) with an upcoming birthday offer is the perfect embodiment of this strategy. Here are a few audience segmentation strategies you can leverage to take your birthday marketing to the next level.  

Using Birthdays for Reactivation

It is more expensive to attract new customers than reactivate lapsed customers. However, as more time passes since a customer’s last purchase, they are more likely to look over your ads. 

A birthday offer is a perfect way to win customers back. Combine fun birthday messaging with a deep discount or free shipping. Providing a birthday gift guide along with this discount is always a plus. If you are putting together a gift guide, make sure you update this gift guide once a quarter to reflect your latest products and the current season.  

When it comes to reactivation campaigns, test a deeper discount than usual. While a birthday order might not be the most profitable, the goal is to remind the lapsed customer why they purchased from you initially, make him/her feel good about your brand, and restart the relationship, thus building their lifetime value.  

Email and direct mail are perfect channels for executing this strategy.

Reaching Out to Spouses with Gift Ideas and Guides

Perfect for digital campaigns, this strategy reaches many people within a household, boosting overall response. Not only will the customer with the birthday see your ad, but a likely gift giver will also see it. 

One of our favorite birthday segmentation strategies, gift guides for spouses, builds the relationship with your customer and their household. By combining your customer data with our consumer database, we build a combined list of those with an upcoming birthday AND their spouse.

Gift Frequent Buyers a Discount on the Products or Categories They Love

While attempting to bring lapsed customers back is imperative, taking care of your most loyal customers on their birthday is even more critical. Provide personalized birthday discounts specific to each customer’s favorite product category or individual product (if applicable). Undoubtedly, your customers will appreciate the personalization, strengthening their relationship with your brand.

When Should I Start My Birthday Campaigns?

Timing is everything when it comes to birthday offers. Starting too far in advance will keep your message from resonating, causing marketing dollars to be wasted. Beginning too close to the customer’s special day will not allow enough time for your customer to use or pass along your offer. 

When planning a birthday advertising campaign, begin reaching out four to six weeks before a customer’s big day. Most people spend a week or less shopping for a gift. This window will give enough time for customers to notice your ad, browse their options, and take action. As the birthday gets closer, increase frequency via digital and email.

Missing Birthdays on Your File?

Collecting customers’ birthdays is not a simple or inexpensive endeavor. You need to spend a lot of time and resources building up birthdays on your file. 

If you are missing customer birthdays or would like to target spouses, LiftEngine can help. LiftBase, our powerful proprietary database of 250+ million US consumers, offers virtually complete birthday coverage and spouse information. LiftEngine can append these fields to your database, provide a SaaS (Software as a Service) audience segmentation and activation platform in LaunchPad or execute campaigns for deployment across online and offline channels on your behalf. With LiftEngine, creating marketing audiences of customers with an upcoming birthday is incredibly simple. Let us know how we can help!

About LiftEngine

Since 2005, LiftEngine's primary mission has been to help clients better understand and connect with their most responsive prospects and customers, online or offline. Our expertise is behind the marketing campaigns of 400+ clients.

Behind LiftEngine is LiftBase, our proprietary addressable consumer database. Comprised of 250 million US consumers, 140 million US households, and 1,000+ enhanced data elements, LiftBase powers our audience development services and industry-leading products, PortalLink and LaunchPad.

Let's connect today!