Birthday Email Marketing
Drive loyalty & sales! Send automated birthday emails & discounts to delight customers. Easy setup.
Yes, Shopify Flow can send birthday emails. But collecting the data is a separate project.
TL;DR: You can build birthday automation in Shopify Flow. It’s possible. But it requires segments, workarounds, and you still need a way to collect birthdays. Sometimes an app is just easier.
Shopify Flow is pretty powerful. Fraud alerts, inventory management, customer tagging – it handles all kinds of automation. So naturally, merchants ask: can I use it for birthday emails? Technically, yes. But “technically possible” and “worth the effort” are different things. (Want the easy route? Skip ahead to the Happy Birthday App for Shopify.)
Flow works with triggers, conditions, and actions. For birthdays, you’d want:
Simple logic. Except Flow doesn’t have a “birthday is today” trigger. You have to build a workaround.
Shopify added a trigger called “Customer joined segment.” Here’s how to use it:
When midnight hits and a customer’s birthday matches today, they join the segment, Flow fires, email goes out.
Clever? Yes. Simple? Not exactly.
Before any of this works, you need birthdays stored in customer metafields. Shopify doesn’t collect birthdays by default. So you’ll need:
This is actually the hard part. Without birthday data in metafields, the segment can’t work. If you’re looking for the best place to ask, it’s the thank you page – customers just bought, they trust you, conversion is high.
In Shopify Admin, go to Customers → Segments and create one that matches the birthday metafield to today’s date.
This requires knowing how Shopify metafield queries work. Not impossible, but not beginner-friendly either.
Shopify Email has a birthday template. Add your branding, message, and discount code.
This approach works, but it has gaps:
No birthday collection. Flow sends emails. It doesn’t collect birthdays. You need to solve that separately – a whole other project.
Basic discount codes. Shopify Email uses static codes. Everyone gets the same “BIRTHDAY20.” For unique codes per customer, you need additional automation or a third-party integration.
One language only. Shopify Email sends the same version to everyone. German customers get English emails. French customers get English emails. Apps with multi-language support handle this automatically.
Timezone weirdness. The segment updates at midnight – but midnight in your store’s timezone. A customer in Sydney might get their birthday email at 3 PM their time, or 3 AM. Depends on where you are.
No reminder emails. Want to send a follow-up if they don’t use the code? That’s another segment, another flow. Things get complicated fast.
Building this yourself might work if:
Probably the better choice if:
The Happy Birthday App handles the whole flow: collects birthdays via checkout widget, sends emails with unique codes, supports multiple languages, respects customer timezones. No segments or flows to build.
Sure. Some merchants use an app to collect birthdays and sync to metafields, then build custom flows on top for additional automation. Best of both worlds if you want Flow’s flexibility with easier data collection.
Shopify Flow can do birthday emails. But it’s a project, not a feature. You need to solve data collection, build segments, create flows, accept the limitations. Thinking about using an email platform instead? We’ve got guides for Klaviyo, Omnisend, and Mailchimp – spoiler: they all have the same collection problem.
Most stores find that an app handling everything out of the box is faster to set up and works better. Birthday emails outperform most other marketing – might as well make them easy to run.
See the full setup in the Happy Birthday App for Shopify, or just try it free.