How to Set Up Birthday Emails in Omnisend (Shopify Guide)

TL;DR: Omnisend has birthday automation built in, but it won’t help you collect birthdays. That’s the part you need to solve first.

Omnisend works well for Shopify. Email, SMS, push notifications – it’s got the marketing stack covered. And yes, it can send birthday emails. But here’s what the marketing page doesn’t mention: Omnisend sends emails, it doesn’t magically know when your customers’ birthdays are. That data has to come from somewhere. (Want the simple path? See the Happy Birthday App for Shopify.)

Where Do Birthdays Come From?

Shopify doesn’t collect birthdays at checkout. There’s no birthday field in customer accounts by default. So when you connect Omnisend to your store, the birthday column is just… empty.

Omnisend gives you options:

1. Build a signup form with a birthday field – Extra friction, lower signups
2. Import from a spreadsheet – Only works if you already have the data
3. Use a third-party app – Omnisend actually recommends this themselves

Here’s the funny part: Omnisend’s own help center points merchants to the Happy Birthday App as an integration for collecting birthdays. That tells you something about how well the built-in options work.

Setting Up Omnisend Birthday Automation

Assuming you’ve figured out data collection, here’s the setup:

1. Go to Automations, click “Create workflow”
2. Pick the birthday trigger from the templates
3. Set timing – send on the day, or before/after
4. Add audience filters if you want to target specific segments
5. Build your message (email, SMS, whatever)
6. Activate and wait

Pretty standard automation stuff. The workflow builder is nice enough.

The Format Trap

Here’s where people get burned: Omnisend requires dates in YYYY-MM-DD format. Not DD/MM/YYYY. Not “15 March 1990.” Exactly YYYY-MM-DD or it won’t work.

European customers write dates day-first. Americans write month-first. If you’ve collected birthdays informally – customer service emails, survey responses, random spreadsheets – your formats are probably all over the place. You’ll spend hours cleaning data before you can import it.

The Happy Birthday App lets you pick your date format upfront. DD/MM for European stores, MM/DD for US stores. Customers enter their birthday naturally, and everything syncs correctly formatted.

The Retroactive Problem

Something Omnisend doesn’t advertise: birthday automation can’t send retroactively.

What does that mean? If a customer’s birthday was last week and you add them to your list today, they won’t get an email until next year. Omnisend only triggers on upcoming birthdays.

Import 1,000 customers with birthdays spread throughout the year? Only those with upcoming birthdays get emails this year. Everyone else waits until their birthday rolls around again.

Discount Code Setup

Most birthday emails include a discount. You probably want unique codes per customer so people can’t share them online. Omnisend can do this, but you need to configure the Shopify integration first.

It works. It’s just another thing to set up and maintain.

The All-in-One Alternative

This is why Omnisend themselves recommend dedicated birthday apps. The Happy Birthday App handles the whole flow:

• Collects birthdays on the thank you page – highest trust moment
• Stores data correctly formatted – no cleanup needed
• Sends emails automatically – timezone-aware, on the right day
• Generates unique codes – built in, no extra config
• Supports 12 languages – without building separate workflows

Or if you love Omnisend’s editor, use the app for collection and sync to Omnisend for sending. You get easy data collection with the email builder you prefer.

When Omnisend Makes Sense

Stick with Omnisend for birthdays if:

• You already have clean, correctly-formatted birthday data
• Birthday emails are part of your broader Omnisend strategy
• You’re comfortable with the setup and limitations

When an App Is Easier

Use a dedicated app if:

• You don’t have birthday data yet
• You want to start collecting at the moment customers trust you most – right after purchase
• You have international customers who need emails in their language
• You want this working today instead of spending an afternoon on it

Bottom Line

Omnisend is solid for email marketing. But birthday marketing has two parts: collecting data and sending emails. Omnisend only does one. Same story with Klaviyo and Mailchimp by the way – they all need you to collect birthdays separately. If you want birthday emails that actually outperform your other campaigns, you need to solve the collection part first.

Check out the Happy Birthday App for Shopify, or just try it free.