Baby brand email marketing: timing emails to the child's age

Why time baby brand emails to the child's age?

Because a baby's needs change on a roughly predictable schedule. A parent with a newborn and a parent with a one-year-old want different things, even if both signed up the same week.

Most brands time everything from the signup or the last order. For baby products, that misses the bigger clock: how old the kid is. A few stage changes you can plan around:

• Solid foods. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends introducing solid foods at about 6 months.
• Cups. The AAP suggests offering a cup when solids start, usually around 6 months.
• Bottles. The AAP says the move off the bottle should finish sometime between 12 and 18 months, and that it's healthiest for kids to drink from an open cup by about 2 years.

Every baby is different, so I'd write these as "around now, here's what helps" emails, not "your baby should be doing this." You're a store, not a pediatrician.

How do I collect a due date or baby's birthday in Klaviyo?

Use a date field. Klaviyo says date fields in sign-up forms "can input date values, which can then, in turn, be used for segmentation or to trigger date-based flows," and it recommends a date block "to ensure the dates are formatted correctly." Every input field has to be connected to a profile property, and you can create a new one, so call it something clear like baby_birthday or due_date.

Two things to get right:

1. Keep the year. Klaviyo says if you pick a format without a year, "the current year is automatically included." For a baby brand, the year is the whole point. Use a full date format.
2. Use one property for both. I'd store the due date and the birthday in the same property and let parents update it after the baby arrives. One date, one set of flows.

Where to ask? For birthday flows, my take is to ask on a dedicated Klaviyo landing page rather than in the middle of a purchase. The same logic works here. Klaviyo's subscribe pages let you add an input field, "e.g., a date field," and map it to a profile property. Send new customers there from your post-purchase emails: "Tell us when your little one is due (or was born) so we only send what fits."

You can also add the date as an optional second step of your signup form. I'm a single opt-in guy for email, so keep the email capture itself simple and ask for the date after it.

How do I trigger emails from the child's age?

Klaviyo's date property-triggered flows do the heavy lifting. Per Klaviyo's help center:

• The date has to be stored in an accepted format, such as YYYY-MM-DD or MM/DD/YYYY, or it won't show up as a trigger option.
• You can start the flow days, weeks or months before the date, or on the date and then add time delays.
• Repeat can be set to Yearly, Monthly or Never. Never means people qualify "only once when the full date matches (day, month, and year)."
• You can't change the date property after you set the trigger. You'd have to clone the flow.

For a baby brand, I'd build it like this:

• A one-time stage flow. Trigger on the birthday property, repeat set to Never, then use time delays to walk through the first year or two: newborn, the solids window around 6 months, first birthday, the bottle-to-cup window. Each email covers the products that fit that stage.
• A yearly birthday flow. Repeat set to Yearly. This is your standard birthday flow, aimed at the kid's birthday instead of the parent's.
• A due date flow. A pre-arrival flow that starts weeks before the due date, for nursery basics.

Klaviyo segments help too. Its date reference lists conditions like "is in the last" and "is in the next" (which use the full date), plus year-ignoring ones like "day is in the next." So a segment of "baby birthday is in the last 26 weeks" gives you every parent with a baby under about six months, for campaigns.

What about diapers and wipes that run out?

That's replenishment, and it runs on a different clock: the last order, not the birthday.

Diapers and wipes get used up. The fix is a reorder reminder timed to how long a pack actually lasts. Across 4 brands I looked at (none of them baby brands), replenishment flows earned $2.23 per person, about 28x the best campaign, and only 2 of the 4 brands had one. That's why I'd build it early. I break down how to set the delay in replenishment email timing, and the build itself in Klaviyo replenishment flow.

Where age data helps is sizes. A made-up example: a parent bought size 2 diapers four times. The birthday says the baby is getting close to the age where many move up a size. Instead of another "time to restock size 2" email, the reminder can say "Still fitting? Here's size 3 too." That's the age clock and the order clock working together.

I'm also fine adding "add this to your order" inside a reorder reminder. For a baby brand, wipes next to diapers is the obvious one.

If Klaviyo's predictive analytics are on in your account, the expected date of next order is another timing input. Klaviyo says you need at least 500 customers who've ordered, at least 180 days of order history with orders in the last 30 days, and some customers with 3 or more orders. I cover what it's good for in Klaviyo predictive analytics.

What should a baby brand cross-sell, and when?

Think about what makes sense next in the child's life, then put that in front of the average customer. That's my cross-sell rule for any brand, and baby brands have it easier than most because the "next" is so clear.

A simple map by stage:

• Newborn: diapers, wipes, swaddles, the basics they're burning through.
• Around 6 months: feeding gear, bibs, the first cup, per the AAP's solids and cup timing.
• 12 to 18 months: the move off the bottle, bigger gear, toddler versions of what they already buy.
• Birthdays: a gift angle each year.

My default is a specific cross-sell flow for each main product, rather than one flow with dynamic product blocks. Accessories come later, so you're not hounding someone the week after their first order. More on the build in cross-sell email flow.

For the yearly birthday flow, my build is two emails (a week before and day of), split by customer, non-customer and VIP, with non-customers getting your welcome offer and never a bigger one. "Our gift to you" framing works fine. The full setup is in my birthday email flow guide.

How do I handle pregnancy loss in baby brand emails?

Plan for it before you launch a due date flow. If you collect due dates, some of those pregnancies will end in loss, and an automated "your baby is 3 months old!" email can hurt.

The UK charity Miscarriage Association has a guide for people trying to stop baby marketing after a loss. It recognizes "the distress and upset that may be caused by some pregnancy and baby-related emails," and notes that "unwanted emails usually need to be unsubscribed from one by one." That's a lot to ask of someone grieving.

What I'd do:

• Add a quiet opt-out to every baby-stage email. A simple link like "Stop baby-stage emails" that uses Klaviyo's update property link to set something like stage_emails to off. Klaviyo says each click "sets the specified value for a profile property," then sends the person to a page you pick. Test it with a real send, since Klaviyo says previews don't update profiles.
• Filter every stage flow on that property. If stage_emails is off, they skip.
• Keep it separate from unsubscribe, so they can still hear from you without the age-based emails.

This isn't new. NPR reported in 2021 that several brands let subscribers skip Mother's Day emails, and one said more than 4,000 subscribers opted out of its Mother's or Father's Day emails.

Does COPPA apply to collecting a baby's birthday?

Generally not when a parent gives it to you. The FTC's COPPA FAQ says the rule "only applies to personal information collected online from children" and "does not cover information collected from adults that may pertain to children." Your emails go to parents. This is general information, not legal advice, so check with a lawyer if your site or products are aimed at kids themselves, or if you sell outside the US.

How do I measure it?

Revenue per recipient, the way I judge any segment test. Compare age-timed stage emails against what that audience got before. More in revenue per recipient.

For the bigger picture on consumables, Klaviyo flows for CPG brands covers the core flows I'd build first. Baby care products that overlap with skin and bath care also follow a lot of what's in personal care email marketing.

FAQ

WRITTEN BY Jack White

Founder of Bardown Digital, a Chicago-based Klaviyo email and retention agency for Shopify brands. He's worked with brands doing $500K to $100M a year, with $100M+ in email-attributed revenue across them.

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