Birthdays are known for a few things: Cake. Balloons. Confetti. And, more recently, an inbox full of birthday rewards from your favorite brands
It’s more important than ever to make customers feel special, and birthday rewards have become as common as candles on a cake. It’s likely you’ve at least thought about offering your customers a special birthday reward, but doing so is no longer just a kind gesture – most customers expect it.
Today, we’re sharing insightful ways you can engage your customers and drive more revenue using birthday rewards. It’s a piece of cake.
Engage customers with birthday rewards
Birthday rewards are common for a reason – because they work. Since many people don’t celebrate alone, special birthday guests visit outside at new times bringing friends and family along. Instead of a single guest coming in to redeem a reward for a free dessert, you’ll often discover is the birthday guest will bring in their entire crew to celebrate with a birthday dinner or lunch. Now you’ve got an entire table full of paying guests that are making great memories and associating your location with that great feeling. You’re building relationships and driving incremental revenue. It’s celebration worthy for both parties.
Larger groups of celebrating leads to a larger check, and consumers redeeming birthday rewards typically spend 31% more than their normal purchase size through Thanx’s platform.
With an inbox full of special offers competing for your customers’ attention though, you need a strong rewards strategy in place.
How will you stand out about the noise? How can you use birthday rewards to increase check sizes and drive incremental revenue? We’ll give you a hint… substantial results don’t come from a one-off giveaway.
The answer is to automate your birthday rewards with a modern customer engagement platform. Thanx gathers purchase history data and other important behavioral information to make a unique profile for each loyalty member. It gives you a 360-degree view of your customer that allows you to unlock deeper insights and gives you the ability to send highly relevant and targeted offers.
A customer engagement platform will supercharge the return on your birthday rewards… here’s how:
Personalize birthday rewards to stand out
It’s commonplace for businesses to offer birthday rewards to every customer. In fact, your customers probably receive heaps of rewards that look strikingly similar.
20% off of $30 spent. $5 off. A free appetizer.
When you use an automated customer engagement platform, you unleash behavioral insights to understand what your individual customers like. The robust data captured allows you to understand their purchase behavior – and understanding purchase behavior means you uncover which rewards truly matter to them.
76% of customers feel that receiving personalized discount offers based on their purchase history is important, and 80% of consumers indicated they are more likely to do business with a company if it offers personalized experiences. Birthdays are a great time to show how much you care, and using customer engagement to send a 1:1 reward will impress your customers and can bring them in for a birthday celebration and more.
Retire blanket discounts. Use customer engagement to provide a personalized offer that will stand out among the masses.
Think outside the inbox
The average person receives 121 emails per day. With so many businesses competing for customers attention via email, it can be challenging to stand out and send a birthday reward that warrants attention.
A great solution is to take the birthday reward mobile. Modern customer engagement moves beyond the inbox into the palm of your customer’s hand.
Through using a customer engagement platform like Thanx, you can give your reward the VIP treatment through sending a birthday push notification. Mobile push notifications are a fresh way to reach out directly to your customer… and push engagement rates are 20x higher than email.
Measure the exact revenue generated from birthday campaigns
It’s common knowledge that birthday rewards work. Reward programs of the past might offer the ability to see redemption rates, but they won’t give you granular data proving revenue generated and direct impact on customer behavior.
Since Thanx captures behavior data on the back-end, the transactional data gathered allows you to learn how much revenue is generated as a result of every individual birthday campaign. You’ll get to see how much more customers spend due to birthday rewards – check sizes are typically 31% larger when customers celebrate a birthday.
Bring in customers outside of their regular engagement window
Humans can be creatures of habit, especially when it comes to dining. Those using modern customer engagement platforms often learn that their customers have routines around when they will and will not visit.
A group of customers coming to redeem a special birthday reward will likely break up the monotony and visit outside of their purchase window. Customers that may visit once every few months now have the incentive to visit more often and spend more to celebrate.
Throw in a half-birthday surprise
Many customers expect a birthday treat. But how many are checking their devices on their half-birthday expecting a special gift? Many may not have even realized their half-birthday has arrived. And some haven’t even heard of a half birthday.
For a spontaneous way to boost engagement with your customers, send them a personalized half-birthday reward. Half-birthday surprises are a great way to show your loyalty members that you’re thinking about them, and to boost check sizes at another point of the year.
Like data-driven birthday rewards, half-birthday rewards are also driven by the customer’s previous behavior. The information collected will add to the 360-degree view of your customer you get with the right customer engagement platform.
Wrap up
Break out the balloons. Customers deserve to feel special on their birthdays… and their half-birthdays! Customers celebrating their special days provide a substantial boost to average check sizes and drive important incremental revenue. Use the methods we’ve shared today to bring in special celebrations all year round.
