The following is a guest post from our friends at Leumas Digital.

Email automation is the key to driving revenue and traffic to your store.

It’s when an email is sent out on an action. It doesn’t require anyone to press send, as a piece of software will send it at the correct time to the correct person, based on the rules that have been set.

Take for example the Happy Birthday app. It'll capture the date of birth of customers and then on the morning of their birthday it will fire them an email. This allows you to focus on other marketing efforts as you know you will never miss a birthday and never had to lift a finger!

As a merchant, you'll know that one of the best ways to drive revenue is through email marketing.

What is becoming more and more successful is automated emails which are triggered on action. These are always a lot more specific, personalised and targeted compared to mass email broadcasts and therefore yield a much better return.

One of the best performing email automation campaigns is sending an email to your customers on their birthday. Various studies of this email activity have proven to be one of the most effective ways to drive revenue and increase customer engagement.

Experian conducted a study into the performance of such emails, and these are some of the key results:

481% higher transaction rate than promotional emails

342% higher revenue per email than promotional emails

179% higher unique click rates than promotional emails.

Since launching the Happy Birthday app (July 2017), we have seen data capture rates of up to 80%. This means there’s a huge interest from customers into this marketing campaign and they are very willing to give these details to you.

We’ve put together a list of tips and tricks to setup your own birthday email campaign on Shopify.

1. Install the Birthday Email app

This app has been purposely built to setup and run birthday email campaigns without any need for manual intervention.

The app collects the data on the thank you page of the checkout and stores that date of birth until the big day comes around when it fires the email.

It also generates a unique discount code for each customer, allowing you to offer a personal touch without worrying about that discount code being abused.

2. Write compelling content

This is a special day for your customers, so you should write with a fun and friendly tone of voice.

Keep your message clear and simple and share your enthusiasm with your customer.

Also, it’s worth bearing in mind that the email will be opened on a mobile so your content needs to be clear and simple. It needs to work perfectly within a phone, as this is where they will be seen!

3. Offer them a birthday present

Your customers will be expecting and accepting gifts on their big day so it’s important you use this opportunity to present them with a gift. This can be free shipping on their next order, a special free gift in their next purchase or a really great coupon code with a video greeting for their birthday. This is your opportunity to turn a great touch point into a sale.

When you install the Happy Birthday app, the developers will help you to setup your email template, discount codes and also to write compelling content for your campaign.

So, start sending your birthday emails today!