Birthday clubs have long been used by businesses to help drive traffic. The idea is simple enough – each year on their birthday you give a customer a freebie or special offer.
Everyone has a birthday and everyone loves getting something for free on their birthday. For you, you get permission to market to them with something they’ll want – it’s requested and anticipated and it’ll help drive traffic into your business.
Easy enough so far.
So how exactly should you go about setting up a birthday club for your business and what can you expect to get out of it?
- Start with your offer. It should be enticing enough to make people want it – both enough to show interest in the first place and enough to actually redeem it. Free stuff and other straight discounts (% or fixed amount) work better than BOGOF offers. Don’t be stingy, nobody will want to sign-up for it and nobody will redeem it if they do – plus you’ll look cheap.
- Create a simple opt-in mechanism. If you have a website consider running a separate list alongside your normal email newsletter and use check boxes to allow subscribers to join the Birthday Club list too. Offline, use simple business card sized cards at checkout.
- Stick to your side of the deal. Someone who joins your birthday club hasn’t given you permission to send them stuff at other times – unless you’ve made that clear as another option. If you abuse their trust then you will lose subscribers – and customers.
- In most cases you will use email to deliver the special offer but in smaller batches you might also consider something posted. This would work even better if you’re not in retail or leisure.
- If you haven’t got enough time to send daily, then organise them into batches for the coming week and change the copy accordingly
- Welcome them in – and don’t begrudge people coming in just for their freebie. This is an opportunity for you to make a lasting brand impression, plus, in many cases they’ll end up bringing friends and family with them.
A birthday club can be a simple, low maintenance and low cost, all year round marketing activity. It’s a great chance to build a relationship with your customers, create a positive impressions, be associated with positive memories and ultimately, drive traffic to your business.
What do you do if your service isn’t suitable for a birthday freebie?
So if you own a car repair business a free oil change might not sound like the best birthday gift. You could try (a) keeping it simple and just sending a card or (b) do a tie-in with a more suitable business (local ice cream parlour, pub, restaurant …). Then again, a free oil change might be just what your clientele wants – run the club based on a ‘free gift on your birthday’ and then test it and see.
