Automated birthday emails give you a reason to contact every past client once a year that has nothing to do with selling, and that is exactly why they work. For a service firm, the client who bought from you three years ago is often the cheapest next sale you have, and a birthday note keeps your name in front of them without a sales message. This article explains how a birthday email runs on the levelpartner.ai platform, which firms should use one, and how to set it up so it fires on the right day for every contact.
How a birthday email works on the platform
The platform stores a date of birth on each contact record. A workflow with a birthday trigger checks that field every day and starts for any contact whose birthday matches today's date. The workflow then sends your email, and can also add a tag, notify the account owner or create a task.
Because the trigger reads the contact record, the email is only as good as your data. A contact with no date of birth never enters the workflow. That is the single fact that decides whether this feature produces anything at all.
Who it suits, and who it does not
Birthday emails make most sense where the relationship is personal and long-running. A mortgage broker whose clients remortgage every few years, or an estate agent hoping to win the next sale or the referral, has a clear reason to stay in touch annually. A consultant with a handful of long-term retained clients may prefer a handwritten card instead.
For an agency selling to companies, a personal birthday rarely matters. The equivalent there is a client anniversary: the date the contract started. The same workflow pattern works with a custom date field for "client since", and we cover that variation below.
Before you start
- A date of birth field populated for the contacts you want to reach, or a plan to collect it.
- Consent to send marketing email to those contacts under the rules that apply where your contacts live, such as UK GDPR or US state law.
- A sending domain verified in Settings.
- One short email, written and approved, with no offer that expires.
How to set it up
- Go to Contacts and click + Add smart list.
- Pick a date of birth filter, click Apply, then Create.
- Go to Automation and click + Create Workflow.
- Choose + Start from Scratch.
- Click Add New Trigger and select Birthday Reminder.
- Add If / Else on a client tag if only past clients qualify.
- Add a Wait, toggle Advance Window and set Resume Between Hours.
- Add a Send Email action and write the birthday message.
- Insert the first name custom value, then click Save Action.
- Add an Internal Notification so the account owner can follow up.
- Turn the workflow to Publish and click Save.
Collecting dates of birth without making it strange
Most firms have the date of birth for some clients and not others. Mortgage brokers usually hold it already from the fact find. Estate agents often do not.
Do not ask for a full date of birth on a marketing form. It reads as intrusive and lowers completion. If you need to collect it, ask for day and month only on an onboarding form after the client has signed, and say why: "We like to send a note on your birthday."
If you only need the day and month, store them in a custom date field and leave the year blank. You collect less personal data, and the trigger still works.
The client anniversary variation
For firms whose clients are companies, set up a custom date field called something like "client since" and populate it when an opportunity is won. Build the same workflow, but use a date-based trigger on that custom field. The email marks a year of working together, thanks the named contact, and mentions one thing you achieved together.
Suppose the agency adds a "client since" date to each of its 80 company contacts. Spread across a year, 80 dates works out at roughly one or two anniversary emails a week, each signed by the account lead. Every client would hear from the agency once a year without a sales pitch, and the account leads would get a weekly prompt to call that week's client. The client count is an assumption for the sake of the sum.
The time it takes each week
Almost none once it is live. The real work is the one-off data clean-up. After that, someone should check monthly that new clients are getting a date added at onboarding, because a birthday workflow that only covers last year's clients slowly stops reaching anyone.
The mistake most people make
Turning the birthday email into a promotion. A note that says "Happy birthday, here is a discount on our services" tells the client the greeting was a pretext. Send the greeting alone. If you want the email to do commercial work, let the account owner notification do it: that person can pick up the phone with a genuine reason to call.
When not to use it
Skip birthday emails if your data has dates for fewer than a third of your clients and you have no way to collect more. The workflow will feel random to your team and reach too few people to matter. Spend the effort on a nurture campaign for past clients instead, which works from data you already hold.
If you want to make the message itself more personal than a first name, see our guide to personalising automated emails with contact data. For other recurring, date-driven messages across the year, the holiday email templates follow the same scheduling logic.
Troubleshooting
Nobody entered the workflow on a day you expected. Check the contact's date of birth is in the standard date field the trigger reads, not in a text field or a note.
The email went out earlier than you wanted. The trigger runs once each morning in the account time zone. Add a wait step with a resume window to hold the email until the hour you prefer.
A contact received it in the wrong year format or on the wrong date. Dates imported from a spreadsheet sometimes swap day and month between UK and US formats. Check a sample of imported records before publishing.
Unsubscribed contacts appear in the workflow. The workflow respects unsubscribes for marketing email, but review your filter so they are excluded from the start and do not trigger owner notifications either.
Frequently asked questions
Do birthday emails count as marketing under UK GDPR?
Generally yes, because the purpose is to maintain a commercial relationship. Treat them like any other marketing email: send only to contacts who have consented or where you have a lawful basis, and honour unsubscribes.
Can I send a birthday SMS instead of an email?
Yes. Replace the send email action with an SMS action in the same workflow. Keep it shorter than the email and send it during working hours.
Should the email come from the company or a person?
From a person. The account owner or the adviser who handled the client's case. A greeting from a company address reads as a mail merge.
What if a client's birthday falls on a weekend?
The workflow still sends on the day. If you prefer weekday sends, add a condition that waits until Monday when the date falls on a Saturday or Sunday.