Sending a Birthday Message

[Brian_Law_MKTO]

Here are the instructions to send a Birthday Message.  In this example, I am using the Date of Birth field which is automatically created when a new Marketo instance is created. It is automatically mapped to the SFDC Contact Birthdate field when Marketo is integrated with SFDC.  The field type is “date.”

You have to set up two smart campaigns since the lead token, {{lead.Date of Birth}}, can only be used in a trigger campaign.

Step 1. Create a trigger campaign with campaign is requested in the Smart List

Step 2.  Configure Wait Step in the Flow

• Add token {{lead.Date of Birth}}. Remember a token can only be used in a trigger campaign.
• Remember to click "Use next anniversary date"
• Set time for when you want the wait step to end. This will be the time the email will be sent out.

Step 3. Add Send Email to Flow

Step 4. Activate

Step 5. Next create a batch campaign with a request campaign in the flow step.

Step 6. Set Smart List

Step 7. Request the first campaign in the Flow

Step 8. Run the campaign.

A Different Method

I was testing something for a client and figured out the following way to also send a Happy Birthday Email using batch smart campaign without a wait step. In this example you will need your SFDC Admin to continuously update the value of the SFDC Contact Birthdate field to the upcoming year. Since the Birthdate field includes Month, Day and Year, the year always needs to changed to the upcoming year. For example, if today is 5/14/2016 then all values in the Birthdate field need to be 2016 or 2017. Once a person's birthday has passed then the year needs to be updated to the next year.

In the smart campaign smart list filter I used in future 0 minutes instead of in future 1 day. Yes, it actually worked.

Set the schedule to run every day. Set the flow so a record can flow once every 364 days.

[Erin_Heiser]

Brian,

I used your instructions above and created a batch campaign with a request campaign in the flow step and ran it.  There are 2954 members.  I would then expect to see that same number in the wait step on the campaign that I am using to send the email.  But there are 0 people in the wait step. Any advice?

And if I can get this method to work, I would think that I would need to run the request campaign on a regular basis, not just once, to capture any new people in my database. Is that correct?

[Dena_LeBlanc]

Hi Brian,

I used the above instructions and when i pressed run it sent them right away and did not take into account my wait step. Can you advise what I was missing?

[Lucas_Metherall]

Hi Dena, did you get the answers you were looking for? I am trying to set up a credit card expiry reminder, and have very little idea of what I am doing.