Creating a Birthday Reward Earning Rule
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Creating a Birthday Reward Earning Rule
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The Birthday Reward earning rule (previously known as the Happy Birthday campaign) allows you to give shoppers a special gift on their birthday. It's a great way to increase loyalty with an emotional connection.
To complete this earning rule, shoppers simply need to provide their birth date.
This article shows how to create a Birthday Reward earning rule, and how to customize every piece of it.
Is this article for me?
For Shopify and Shopify Plus, refer to our Creating a Birthday Reward Earning Rule on Shopify article.
Creating the earning rule
- From your Yotpo Loyalty & Referral main menu, go to Set Up Program > Earning Rules.
- Click on Create earning rule
- Click Select on Birthday Reward.
Setting up the earning rule
The Birthday Reward earning rule is highly customizable. You have control over backend settings as well as the text your customers will see on your rewards popup or on your rewards page.
- Reward the customer with...
Choose either points or a coupon- Coupon - Which coupon should the customer get?
Please note:
You can only choose from a list of coupons you have already set up. Read about how to create coupons.
- Reward the customer with...
- Points - How many points should we give the customer
- Title - This field is the name of your Birthday Reward earning rule
- Reward Text - Enter the value you want to display to the shopper
Please note:
If you make a change to the Reward Text field, don't forget to also update the How many points should we give the customer? field. Make sure they always reflect the same number. This will not be done automatically.
- Description - After the customer clicks on the earning rule, they will see a short 1-2 sentence description of the reward
- Fraud Prevention Message - Fraud prevention is an optional feature that helps ensure shoppers will enter their true birthday. If you do not wish to use this feature, simply erase the text and leave it blank. Learn more about the Fraud Prevention feature below.
- Success Message - The Success Message is shown after a shopper successfully signs up for the earning rule, and will also be shown if the customer attempts to join the same campaign again after they already signed up
- Icon - By default, this is the birthday icon, but you can also choose from hundreds of other options. Click “Use Font Awesome Icon Names” and copy & paste the icon name you want
- Call To Action - You can customize the text that appears on the call-to-action button
- Restrict to VIP Tiers (this setting is available only to premium customers) - You can choose to restrict which customers are allowed to sign up for this earning rule. Learn more about setting up VIP tiers
VIP Tier advanced setup
You have the option to give different rewards to different VIP tiers. To do so, follow these instructions:
- Create a separate Birthday Reward earning rule for each one of your VIP tiers.
- Assign one VIP tier to each earning rule with the Restrict to VIP tiers setting.
- Set up a generic earning rule with no VIP restrictions. A generic campaign ensures the customer will receive a gift even:
- If they have no VIP tier status
- If their VIP tier status doesn't have a dedicated Birthday Reward earning rule.
Please note:
It's necessary to set up a generic birthday reward earning rule just in case a customer has no VIP tier or there is no earning rule dedicated to their tier. In these cases, a generic earning rule ensures the customer will still receive a gift.
If a generic earning rule doesn’t exist, they will not receive a reward.
If multiple earning rules are configured for the same VIP tier, customers will be awarded according to the first earning rule that was created.
Fraud prevention
The fraud prevention option deters customers from trying to get the reward sooner than their true birthday, for example, during high-traffic times such as holidays.
Please note:
After a customer submits their birthday, it's impossible for them to change it. They can only change their birthday by contacting a site admin. Read more about how to manually update a customer's birthday.
One reward per calendar year
The system will only allow a customer to get one birthday gift per calendar year.
Regardless of whether fraud prevention is enabled or disabled, and regardless of how many times you update a shopper's birthday, the system will not grant more than one gift per calendar year.
30-Day waiting period
Fraud prevention ensures all customers will have a waiting period of at least 30 days, from the day they signed up.
- If the customer signs up and sets their birthday to more than 30 days away, there is no issue. They will receive the reward on their birthday
- If the customer signs up and sets their birthday to less than 30 days away, they will need to fulfill a waiting period of 30 days from the date they signed up
For example, if the customer signed on January 5 and claims their birthday is January 6, the reward will be granted on January 6 + [29 days], ensuring each customer waits a minimum of 30 days for their birthday reward
Disabling the Fraud Prevention feature
Fraud prevention is optional. To turn off the Fraud Prevention option, erase the default text and leave the field empty. This will automatically disable the setting.
Please note:
Each time you manually disable fraud prevention, the system triggers an action that sends a reward to all customers whose birthdays passed but they were still in the 30-day waiting period.
Enabling the Fraud Prevention feature
To enable the Fraud Prevention feature, you need to populate the field with any text of your choosing. As soon as you write text in the field and click "save", fraud prevention will be turned on.
Fraud prevention FAQs
I changed the customer's birth date in the admin. What will happen now?
If you change a customer’s birth date in the back-end admin after the customer has already received a gift this year, the customer will not receive a second gift in the same year. They will receive their next reward on the new date in the upcoming calendar year.
For example, if a customer received a birthday reward in March 2020 and then contacted the store to ask and change their birth date to April, the customer will receive another birthday reward only April 2021.
I decided to disable fraud prevention. Who will get a gift now?
Every time you disable the Fraud Prevention feature, it triggers a backfill action that automatically sends a birthday gift to all customers who had a birthday but their reward was delayed due to fraud prevention.
These customers will automatically receive their reward immediately.
I changed my Fraud Prevention settings several times - How do I know who is getting a gift and when?
The system runs one daily check at 8 a.m. EST and checks who is supposed to receive a birthday perk today.
It makes no difference how many times fraud prevention settings were changed prior to this daily check. The system only sees the current status (enabled or disabled) during the daily check.
For example:
- If during the daily check fraud prevention is disabled, the customer will receive a reward on that day (their birthday.)
- If during the daily check fraud prevention is turned on, the system also check if the 30-day waiting period has passed. If the waiting period has passed, they will receive a reward on that day.
What time of day are the gifts sent out
All of the birthday rewards are sent out every day at 8 a.m EST.
Does re-enabling fraud prevention reset the 30-day waiting period for customers?
No matter how many times you enable/disable fraud prevention, customers will still wait 30 days from the day they signed up.
Unless of course, you disable fraud prevention ON the customer's birthday, or their birthday has already passed. In that case, a gift is sent out right away to these customers.
However, the system still will only allow 1 gift per calendar year per customer.
Examples:
- The customer signed up for the birthday reward earning rule when fraud prevention was off. Their birthday is next week. Tomorrow you decide to enable fraud prevention. When will the customer get the reward?
Answer: 30 days from the date when the customer signed up for the birthday reward - The customer signed up for the birthday reward earning rule when fraud prevention was enabled. Their birthday is next week. Tomorrow you decide to disable it. When will the customer get the reward?
Answer: On the day of their birthday - The customer signed up for the birthday reward earning rule when fraud prevention was enabled. Their birthday was today. In 2 weeks you decide to disable the fraud prevention. When will the customer get the reward?
Answer: On the date that you decide to disable the fraud prevention
I have multiple Birthday Reward earning rules. What if one has Fraud Prevention and the others don't?
If even one birthday reward earning rule does NOT have fraud prevention, this will take precedence and will cancel fraud prevention on all your birthday reward earning rules.
For this reason, it's important to make sure all fraud prevention settings are the same across your different Birthday Reward earning rules.
Email notifications
When you activate your earning rule, the customers who sign up for the birthday reward earning rule will automatically receive an email on their birthday to remind them of their gift.
Please note:
By default, the email trigger is enabled and will be sent automatically to the customers who signed up for this earning rule on the date of their birthday.
How to customize emails
You can customize the content of the email to reflect your brand’s personality and tone.
- Open the Programs tab
- Click Triggered Emails
- Click the Customize Email button
Tip
If you need help distributing emails, read more about setting up email integrations
How to Disable Triggered Emails
- Open the Programs tab
- Click Triggered Emails
- Click the Disable Notification button
Tip:
Triggered emails are managed separately for each earning rule. Disabling the email notification for the birthday reward earning rule will not affect other email triggers you have set up on different earning rules.
Email integrations
If you're using an Email Service Provider (ESP) and you want to connect it to the birthday reward earning rule:
- Follow the instructions to disable triggered emails (above)
- Integrate your preferred ESP to Yotpo Loyalty & Referrals
- Follow the instructions to configure the Happy Birthday trigger to your chosen ESP
Unique instructions for each ESP
Next steps
Setting up email notifications - The Birthday Reward email can be sent through an integrated Email Service Provider (ESP).
Click the ESP relevant to you to integrate it and configure the Happy Birthday trigger:
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