Walkthrough: Creating a marketing automation campaign to send a birthday email

Current version: 10.2

A milestone that is often used to target customers is their birthday. By creating a scheduled marketing automation campaign that runs based on a birthday rule, you can send a birthday message to customers. This walkthrough takes you through the steps to achieve this.

This walkthrough details the following steps:

  • Move the birthday rules to xConnect Contact

  • Create a marketing automation campaign

To send a birthday email message to customers, you must create an automated email campaign before you create the marketing automation campaign. You must also create a segmented contact list using the birthday rules.

Move the birthday rules to the xConnect Contact folder

Birthday rules are not included by default in Sitecore because they involve personally identifiable information (PII). You must move birthday rules to the xConnect Contact folder yourself.

Important

Because birth dates are PII sensitive data, you must enable indexing of this sensitive data in the xDB index before you can use birthday rules.

To move the birthday rules to the xConnect Contact folder:

  1. In the Content Editor, go to /sitecore/System/Settings/Rules/Definitions/Elements/XConnect - Contact Personal Details Conditions.

    xConnect - Contact Personal Details Conditions in the Content Editor.
  2. Right-click the condition you want to use and click Copying, Move To.

  3. In the Move Item To dialog box, click sitecore/System/Settings/Rules/Definitions/Elements/XConnect - Contact and then click Move.

    Move Item To dialog box.
  4. Repeat steps 1 to 3 for each birthday rule and save your changes.

Create a marketing automation campaign using a segmented list

In the example illustrated in the following figure, the marketing automation campaign is scheduled to run at 11:00 each day. When it does, assuming the segmented list is created based on the rule where the contact's birthday is today, all the contacts who have a birthday today are enrolled in the marketing automation plan and an email message is sent to them.

Start element settings.

To create a marketing automation campaign using a segmented list:

  1. On the Marketing Automation dashboard, click Create.

  2. In the Create automation campaign dialog box, click Blank automation campaign.

  3. On the canvas, click the Start element and, on the details pane, select the Scheduled enrollment option.

  4. Define the scheduled enrollment parameters.

  5. Click OK when you have finished and then click Apply.

  6. In the Toolbox, select the Send email element and drag it onto the canvas.

  7. On the canvas, click the Send email element and, on the details pane, select an email campaign and then click Apply.

  8. Click Save to save your changes.

Do you have some feedback for us?

If you have suggestions for improving this article,