Tutorial: automatic birthday wishes with an offer

🎯 Goal

Every customer gets a warm birthday message with a small gift, every year, automatically.

🧰 What you need

• A connected number
• An approved Marketing template with a coupon

Step 1: collect birthdays

Pick one or more:

• Import: add a birthday column (YYYY-MM-DD, e.g. 1990-05-14) to your CSV and map it as a Custom field (Import).
• Chatbot: in your welcome flow, add Ask question “When is your birthday? We have a surprise 🎁 (DD-MM-YYYY)”, Answer must be: A date, Save the answer to birthday. The answer is saved on the contact too.
• WhatsApp Flow: the Registration form includes a date of birth field. Map it to birthday.

Step 2: the birthday template

Templates → New template birthday_offer, Marketing:

Happy birthday, {{1}}! 🎂 Here's 15% off anything this week — our gift to you.

Add a Copy offer code button BDAY15 and a Visit website button. Get it approved.

Step 3: the date flow

1. Automation → Templates → Birthday wishes, or New rule.
2. Click the Trigger card → Date-based → Contact field with the date: birthday, Every year (birthday), At 09:00. Keep Background rule (runs next to chatbots) on.
3. Click + and add a Template message birthday_offer, {{1}} → {{first_name}}.
4. Optional: Set / remove tag birthday-sent, to see who received it.
5. Check, then Publish.

SSharma Sweets✓

Happy birthday, Ravi! 🎂 Here’s 15% off anything this week — our gift to you.

⧉ Copy code BDAY15↗ Shop now

Message

Sent at 9 am on the customer's birthday.

Tip

Test it by setting your own contact’s birthday to tomorrow’s date (any year), and check the next morning.

Common mistakes

• Dates as text (“14 May”). Store them as YYYY-MM-DD; the date step on Ask question does this for you.
• A text message instead of a template. Birthday messages start conversations, so they must be templates.

What’s next

Date triggers →Renewals and anniversaries too.Segments →Target by birthday month.