Help · Automations
Birthdays
A birthday is a reason to write to somebody that has nothing to do with a sale. Carpe Messaging keeps a birthday on each profile that has one, and the Birthday automation uses it to send a treat a few days early. This page covers where birthdays come from, how the automation decides when to start, and the discount code it gives.
Only the month and the day
We keep the month and the day of a birthday, never the year. A birthday is October 17, not a date of birth, so nobody's age is ever on a profile.
Wherever a birthday comes from, a year that arrives with it is dropped before anything is saved. A form asks for the month and the day only. A file you import may say 10/17/1990; the profile keeps October 17. An export writes the birthday as October 17, and importing that file again keeps every one.
February 29 is a real birthday and is kept as one. In the years with no February 29, it is celebrated on February 28.
Where birthdays come from
A birthday reaches a profile in four ways: the person gives it on one of your forms, you import it, a team member types it on the profile, or Shopify's own Birth date field already has it. The person's own word wins: an import or Shopify only ever fills in a birthday that is missing.
- Your forms. Add Birthday (month and day) to a panel, under Fields in Add to this panel. It is two lists side by side, the month by name and then the day, so nobody can pick February 30. A birthday given on a form replaces the one on that person's profile when the form knows who they are; otherwise it fills one in only where there is none. See Editing a form for the details.
- An import. A Birthday column in your file — month and day, with or without a year — fills in the birthday of anybody who has none. It never replaces a birthday the person already gave you. A value that cannot be read as a month and a day leaves that profile without one, and the import's summary names the column once. Dates with slashes are read one way for the whole column. If any date in it puts the day first, like 17/10/1990, every date in it is read day first; if any puts the month first, like 10/17/1990, every date is read month first. A column with both, or one where every date could be read either way, like 05/06, gives no birthdays, and the summary names it.
- A team member. On a profile, Edit offers the month and the day. What a team member saves replaces whatever was there. See Profiles.
- Shopify. If your store uses Shopify's Birth date customer field, we read the month and day from it for anyone who hasn't given us a birthday; we never change it in Shopify.
A profile shows its birthday under the email address, as Birthday October 17, or Not given. Deleting a profile deletes its birthday with everything else.
Asking the people you already know
Two form examples ask for a birthday. Birthday Club is a popup for anybody not yet subscribed: a first name, an email address and a birthday. Birthday Pop-up is for people you already know who have not told you theirs.
Birthday Pop-up shows only to people in the built-in segment No birthday yet, and never to a visitor your store does not recognize. It opens after two minutes on your site, counted across pages, and at most once in 30 days. Once somebody saves their birthday they leave the segment, and it stops showing to them.
To make one, open Content → Forms, press New form, and pick it on the Examples tab. If you have disabled No birthday yet in Settings → Built-in segments, creating the pop-up is refused with a sentence saying so; enable the segment and create it again.
No birthday yet holds everybody with a verified identity who has not told you their birthday. You can use it like any segment, for example in a campaign asking people to add theirs.
The Birthday automation
The Birthday automation starts a set number of days before each person's birthday — 3, unless you change it — and sends one email and one text, each with a discount code. To make one, open Automations, press Create automation and choose the Birthday card.
The card asks one question first: which discount the birthday code comes from. Choose one of your discounts, or Choose later and pick it in the email afterward. Until the email has a discount, applying your changes is refused. Starting points describes the card in full.
Like every starting point, its email and its text begin as drafts, and the messages are marketing: the email goes only to people who gave you consent to email them, and the text only to people who gave you consent to text them. Anybody in Do not email is never emailed, birthday or not.
When it starts
The automation starts somebody between 0 and 30 days before their birthday, the number you set on the Start card, and only between 10 am and 8 pm in your store's time zone, so nobody gets a birthday message in the middle of the night.
- 0 means the birthday itself. The Start card then says On their birthday.
- Late, never after. Somebody who gives you their birthday inside those days, or who is already inside them when you enable the automation, still starts at the next chance, as long as the birthday has not passed. Nobody starts after their birthday; they wait for the next one.
- No message after the birthday. If a message has to wait until after the birthday, for your Frequency limit, your sending hours, the hours a text may go out, or your store has no plan, it is not sent late. That person leaves the automation, and their profile says their birthday passed before the message could go out.
- Once for each birthday. Each person starts once a year, for that year's birthday.
- Only verified identities. A profile that is not confirmed yet does not start. See Verified identity.
See What starts an automation for the Start card itself.
The birthday discount code
Each person gets a code of their own, made from the discount you chose, when their email is sent. Choose a discount that gives everybody one code, and creating the automation changes that for you. A discount you choose later, in the email or the text, keeps whatever its own page in Discounts says.
A discount new from Shopify gives one code to everybody. When you choose one of those, creating the automation enables Give each person a code of their own for it — the same setting as on the discount's page in Discounts — and the question says so under your choice. The setting is the discount's, not the birthday's: from then on every email and form that gives that discount gives each person their own code, and every code counts toward Shopify's own limit on codes. Check any draft email or form that gives the discount's own code: it now gives a code for each person instead, and a form needs its discount block changed before you can publish it.
That setting can't be enabled while a campaign that is ready to send, a form or another automation is giving away the discount's own code. Then nothing is created, the question says which one is in the way, and you can choose another discount or Choose later. If you choose later, the email and the text ask for the discount before you enable the automation.
A code of their own is good for 7 days from that day, through the end of the seventh day in your store's time zone, or until the discount ends in Shopify if that comes sooner. The email prints the last day.
Each code is that person's own and stops working once it is used. The text gives the same kind of code, good for the same 7 days. A code somebody has already been sent keeps working until its last day, even if the discount is deleted or deactivated in Shopify afterward. Discounts has the rest: what happens when a discount is deleted or ends, and how a code is counted when somebody uses it.
Finding people by birthday
A segment can ask about a birthday. In the segment builder, Has a birthday coming up finds people whose birthday is in the next few days, in a month you pick or this month, or who have or have not given one.
"In the next 7 days" counts today, by your store's calendar. Somebody who never gave a birthday is never in the next 7 days, so excluding a birthday month keeps everyone who has not told you theirs. Building a segment explains each choice.