Everyone likes receiving gifts for their birthday, and your customers are no different! 


To encourage return business from your guests, you may choose to reward them for their loyalty with such incentives as a complimentary drink or dessert if they choose to celebrate their special day at your restaurant. 


Capturing your customers’ birthdays


Capturing your customers’ birthdays is the first step to identifying who needs to receive these emails, and when. 


To obtain this information for both online and internal reservations, follow the below steps. 


For online bookings:

Ensure that your widget includes birthday date. In the widget configrator, select contact details settings on the left. tick the boxes as per the image below and include some text in the description field so your customers know why you want to know when their special day is, and how you’d like to mark it. 


For internal bookings:


When taking a phone or email booking, ask the customer when their birthday is, and record that information on the booking form under the ‘Detail’ tab. 



Make sure to also ask your customer do they consent to receiving emails from your for their birthday other special events and offers throughout the year to ensure they’re opted-in in line with GDPR. 

To opt a customer in, select the ‘Marketing Options’ button on the diner tab:




And tick the box for email that appears on the pop out. 




Compiling a database of people celebrating their birthday each month to target


1 week in advance of the beginning of a new month (so third week of the month), we recommend extracting a marketing database for those celebrating their birthday during that new month. 


To create a list, please see this video or follow this guide.


Name the list the month you wish to send the birthday mailer for e.g. August Birthdays 2024


Make sure when compiling your list, that you activate the Birthday filter after checking the ‘ALL filters’ box. Select nearest weeks value as 5. 


 


Design Your Template 

You can then design your template. 

You can have ResDiary do this template design for you if you wish, at a fee of £40/€50. 

To do it yourself, go to the Promote tab on the toolbar and select ‘Manage Templates’

Here, you can add a new one, and call it Birthday Mailer.


Scheduling the sending of your mailer


Once you’ve created your desired template, you can schedule a message to go out and set it to 'Do not repeat'





We recommend sending birthday mailers one week before the end of the month. 


Repeat the Create Message process using your birthday template each month, creating a new marketing list each time for those celebrating their birthday during the upcoming month.