Birthday email flow: why it's one discount I'm happy to give

This is for Shopify founders on Klaviyo who keep seeing lists of birthday email ideas and wondering if they're missing something.

How does a Klaviyo birthday flow work?

Per Klaviyo's help center, a birthday flow is a date property-triggered flow. You create it from the Flows tab and point the trigger at the profile property that holds the birthday.

Here's what Klaviyo's page confirms:

• You need the data first. Birthdays have to live on the profile as a property before the flow can use them.
• Ways to get it: a date field on a sign-up form, a CSV import, or an ecommerce integration that already has a birthday property.
• The property has to exist. It only shows up in the trigger dropdown once at least one profile has it. If it doesn't appear, check that the birthdays are in one of Klaviyo's accepted date formats.
• Timing: the flow can start on or before the birthday. Klaviyo suggests an earlier time of day in the recipient's local timezone, repeating yearly.
• Starting early: if the flow starts before the birthday, a target date delay marks the birthday itself, so you can place emails before and after it.
• Go live: messages left in Draft won't send, and Manual messages need approval before they go out.

The setup is easy. The real questions are what to send and when to build it.

Why a birthday discount is one I'm happy to give

I'm careful with discounts. Most of the time, I'd rather tie an offer to a specific action, like a first order or getting a lapsed customer back. I go deeper on that in my email discount strategy.

A birthday is different. It's personal, and it only comes around once a year. It doesn't train people to wait for the next code the way a constant stream of discounts can.

And it lands well. A special discount on someone's birthday can make their day a little better. That's a good feeling to have tied to your brand.

So when a brand already has birthdays saved, I offer a special birthday discount. Some people who use it were going to reorder anyway. Once a year, I'm fine with that.

How I'd set up a birthday email flow

Keep it short. Two emails is plenty.

1. About a week before: the birthday discount. Make it good through the end of their birthday week so there's a real window, not a made-up countdown.
2. On the birthday: a short note. Happy birthday, and a reminder the discount is still waiting.

Then split it by customer status, starting with the "Placed order ever?" split I use in every flow:

• Non-customers: the same offer as your welcome series, never a bigger one. Otherwise people learn the best deal comes from waiting.
• Customers: the birthday discount.
• VIPs: something a little better, since they've earned it. I cover how I set the spend threshold in how to build a VIP email segment.

Also keep large-quantity buyers out if a birthday offer doesn't fit how they order.

Birthday email ideas for ecommerce

The discount is my default. Make it feel like a gift, not a coupon: say happy birthday first, then the offer. If a straight discount doesn't fit your margins or your brand, a few other options work too:

• Gift with purchase. A free sample, a mini, a new flavor. It pulls the order and gets people trying something new.
• Free shipping on the next order. Easier on margin than a percentage off, and it still feels like something.
• Early access. Let birthday people shop a launch or a limited run before the rest of the list.
• A small gift for your best customers. For VIPs, something shipped to them with no purchase needed can do a lot for the relationship.

Whatever you give, say what it is in the subject line. Across 7 brands and 2,821 campaigns, vague questions were the worst-performing subject line pattern. So "Happy birthday, here's your gift" beats "Guess what?"

Gift framing works outside birthdays too. One snack brand sent a campaign with the subject line "Our gift to you..." It wasn't a birthday flow, but it's the same idea: lead with the gift, not the code.

How should you collect birthdays?

Don't ask for them in the middle of a purchase. Someone checking out has one job, and an extra question pulls their attention away from it.

My preference is a dedicated landing page built in Klaviyo. Klaviyo's landing pages are hosted pages with a form embedded in them, and they can ask for more than one piece of information. Send people there from an email, tell them what they'll get, and collect the birthday on its own page.

Every extra field on a sign-up form adds a little friction. If you ask for a birthday and never send anything, you paid that cost for nothing. My rule on extra form fields: test them, don't assume. More on that in what a good signup form conversion rate looks like.

And be honest in the ask. "Tell us your birthday and we'll send you a gift" is a promise. Keep it.

Where does a birthday email flow rank?

Lower than most founders think. Here's the order I'd build in for a consumable brand:

1. The 8 core flows, starting with Welcome Series, Abandoned Checkout and Abandoned Cart.
2. A reorder reminder (replenishment) flow.
3. Back in stock, if you ever sell out.
4. Then extras like a birthday flow.

The reorder reminder is the big one. Across 4 consumable brands I work with, replenishment flows earned about $2.23 per person, about 28x the best campaign. At a subscription wellness brand, a "your order is coming up" reminder made $47,321 in one month, 74% of all flow revenue.

A birthday flow fires once a year per person. A reorder reminder fires every time someone's about to run out. The full build order is in essential Klaviyo flows for CPG brands.

Where these numbers come from

The replenishment number comes from 4 consumable brands I work with (2,897 campaigns, $17.7M in email revenue), and only 2 of the 4 had a replenishment flow built. The subject line finding comes from 7 brands and 2,821 campaigns. Both samples are small, so treat them as directional.

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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