Automate a Birthday Message

Show subscribers your appreciation with a personalized birthday message sent a few days before or on their birthday.

To send an Automated Message to subscribers on their birthday, first make sure that the subscriber's have a custom field called something like "Birthday." When importing the subscriber lists, make sure that the dates are all saved in the same date format (ex: Excel CSV files save dates with the default format of "31-Dec"):

Then follow these steps to set up the Automated Message:

1. Open the Tools folder in the left menu
2. Click on Automated Messages
3. Click Create
4. Type in a Name for the automation
   
   
5. Select a list to which the message will be sent
   1. Select All Subscribers if you want to send to all of the subscribers
      
      
6. Choose to trigger the message by: 
   
   1. The birth date custom field that contains the date (in a supported format like 12/31)
      
      1. Select a date format for the birthday custom field (mm/dd)
      2. The date format must be in the same exact format as the selected format
      3. If a subscriber's date custom field is in a different format from the selected format, the date will be ignored
      4. The frequency of this automated message should be set to check every 1 day to see if today's date is a subscriber's birthday
         
         
7. Now you have to configure when to send the automated message to the subscribers
   1. Send at: the time of day to send the message
   2. Send Date: on the birthday or a few days before
   3. Frequency: resend the message every 1 day, to those who have a custom field that equals today's date
   4. End Date: optional to set a date to stop the automation (if you only want to run it for 2 years, for instance)
      
      
8. Status: Keep Paused until absolutely ready to start sending the message to subscribers
   
   
9. Save the message by clicking the Save button or the Save Automation and Create Message button
   
   
10. Once the Automated Message configuration is saved, you'll need to create a message in the Edit Message tab
    
    
11. In this tab, create the message you would like to send to the subscribers when all of the conditions are met from the configuration screen
    1. You'll only see the "Create New Message" page once when creating a message for the first time
    2. This message is the only message associated with the automated message
    3. You can edit the message at any time, but we strongly suggest keeping the message the same after activating the automation.  See the Tracking an Automated Message notes below.
       
       
12. Save the message before returning to the Configure tab.  Any unsaved changed will be lost
    
    
13. When you're ready to activate the automated message, select the Status: Active