Birthday and name day messages that bring customers back

A birthday and a name day are two days a year when you can message a customer without it feeling like an ad. Instead of a percentage birthday or name day discount, offer one specific thing and say clearly in the message how long the gift is valid. Name days are a Central and Eastern European custom, celebrated in Slovakia, Czechia, Hungary, Poland and others, and most guides written elsewhere ignore them. If your customers do not celebrate them, the birthday advice works everywhere.

Name day discount or a gift?

A 20% discount sounds generous, but you pay it on the whole purchase. Picture a customer who would have come in that day with family anyway and spent €60. They get €12 off and you have not won a single extra visit, you have just made a purchase cheaper that would have happened anyway.

A free coffee or croissant only costs you what you pay for it, in our example say €0.80. And to collect the gift, the customer has to come in. That visit is the whole point.

Two ready to use messages

Both are under 120 characters, so they can be read at a glance. Just swap in your product.

Birthday:

Happy birthday! Your coffee is on us this week. Just show your card at the counter.

Name day:

Happy name day! Enjoy a free croissant with your order this week. Just show your card at the till.

How long the gift is valid

The words "this week" are not decoration. Without a deadline, the customer puts the gift off and forgets it. The deadline is a rule you write straight into the message and that your staff know too. No small print, no three lines of terms, just a clearly stated week.

What to ask the customer

For a birthday message, the day and month are all you need. You do not need the year of birth, so do not ask for it. Keep the field optional: anyone who prefers not to share it should not lose out on the loyalty card. The less personal data you collect, the less you have to protect. Rewardly is GDPR compliant and stores data in the EU.

How it runs in Rewardly

Among the push notifications, Rewardly has a ready Birthday message. It appears on the customer's phone lock screen at 9:00 on their birthday, and you turn it on once, with no calendar to watch. Name days have no ready automation, so schedule that message yourself for the date and send it to a group you define with a custom field. Push notifications are part of the Advanced and Professional plans.

To see what else is worth automating, read about automated retention campaigns and the examples in automating customer communication in practice.

How to tell if it works

After a month, count how many customers who got the message came in within the week and collected the gift. Compare yourself with yourself, month against month, not with numbers from the internet. Every business has different customers and a different visit rhythm.

If few people collect the gift, try a different item first, not a bigger discount. What works in a café may not work in a bakery, so test specific items one at a time. If people celebrating keep coming back, leave the message running and spend your time on something else.

Set up birthday and name day messages, try Rewardly for €0

Live in 2 minutes, with no upfront payment.