Build Your List Through a Birthday Club

Not that I needed to be reminded that my birthday is rapidly approaching (I'm not getting AARP mail yet, I'm not, really) but I gotta say Oceana Rain does it again! I got this piece in the mail, wishing me a happy birthday. Nice touch. And with a coupon. I'm going shoppin! Then I remembered a great comment that a reader once made about a birthday club as it relates to restaurants.

And, as my little SF store in Cow Hollow proves, any business can really put a birthday club to work for them.

So I started to think of all the birthday "greetings" we've gotten from businesses. My dog Stan got a birthday card from his Doctor and his day care Pet Camp every year! Nice huh? They already knew his birthday from all of the information they had and it made us feel great about leaving the little guy in a place that cares enough to remember his birthday. If it can work for pets, it works for anything! Then I saw a customer of ours the k9 Biscuit Company asking for Pet's Birthday in the newsletter sign up. Brilliant!

Our real estate agent sends me a birthday card too, just in case I was in the mood to buy or sell a house around the big Four-Oh.

So I took to the web and found some really creative ideas for birthday clubs for ALL industries. Some were as simple as giving "great birthday offers" and others were very specific, but all in all, some great promotions.

Coffee Club

Williams Coffee Pub gives free cake! Now that's a birthday offer! Club members start their birthday out with a celebration.

Travel

Odyssey Cruises sends "a little surprise" when that time of the year rolls around...intriguing.

Food

As if anyone needs a reason to get ice cream, let it be  a child's birthday! Cold Stone Creamery knows that for giving just a few bucks worth of ice cream, they'll get a bunch of people who actually pay for it, along with the birthday person who gets it free! They also let members tell them how they'd like to hear about their birthday wishes.

East of Chicago Pizza just asks for information but doesn't tell new members what they'll get, not a great implementation IMO, but they're halfway there!

Theater

Pittsburgh Public Theater gives members $25 off of a ticket and tells them they'll be hearing from them via email.
Portland Comedy Sportz gives members two free tickets just for being born.

Yarn (huh?)

Yep, yarn. Posh, a Denver-based Yarn store emails members with birthday discounts!

Golf

Bunker Hill Birthday Club gives great birthday offers via email.
How about a free round of golf at Alvamar in Kansas on your birthday?

The important thing is, once you have your birthday club (feel free to use the free opt-in form that VerticalResponse provides), make sure you put it prominently on your site and include it in your email campaigns to your recipients too. There's a good chance they'll forward your email to their friends to sign up which in the end, gets you more potential customers.

If you're using a birthday club to build your list and drive more business let me know, I'll post yours too.

Comments

[Raj Jambotkar]

Whitt -

I'd suggest adding a field for dates to your current opt-in form and adding a nifty calendar picker when you put the form on your site. Additionally, you can add dates to your list manually or via a file upload.

To send emails automatically, you would need to use the VerticalResponse API. We can get you up and running with it very quickly - contact me or visit our API website for more info:

http://www.verticalresponse.com/labs

Cheers,
Raj (Product Manager, VR)
rajesh @ verticalresponse.com

[Adrian]

The birthday idea is one that can work really well but the problem is that when you tell people in advance what they can expect, they lie about their birthday because they want the freebie/offer immediately.

"So what?" you may ask. Well when you mail them the following year on the false birthday date they will have forgotten having subscribed and may either report you as a spammer or add you to their black list thereby preventing all further communications with them.

Does anyone have any ideas how to address this issue?

[Whitt]

Sounds like a good idea. How would we setup such birthdates in our forms and database? The what would be needed for mailing out them? Does VR have an auto function for such a task?