The birthday flow for Shopify stores
A birthday email flow for Shopify stores: how to collect birthdays, when to send, full copy, and setup notes for Klaviyo and Omnisend.
The flow at a glance
A birthday email is one of the few marketing emails people are glad to get. Keep it warm, keep it short, and do not make it feel like a sale.
- 1Email 1: The gift
- 2Email 2: On the day
Before the flow: getting the date
A birthday flow is only as big as the number of birthdays you hold. The date has to live on the customer's profile as its own field before either tool can do anything with it, so the real first step is the form, not the email. source, checked 25 September 2026
Add a date field to your signup form and say in the label what the customer gets for filling it in. If your store platform already holds birthdays, the integration can bring them across, which is worth checking before you ask anyone again. source, checked 25 September 2026
Email 1: The gift
Subject: Something for your birthday
Preview: Early, so you have time to use it
A warm line, the gift (free product with an order, free shipping, or a discount), how long it lasts, and one product suggestion based on what they bought before.
Email 2: On the day
Subject: Happy birthday, first name
Preview: Your gift is still waiting
Two lines. Happy birthday. The gift is still there.
Setup notes
Klaviyo: add a birthday profile property from your form, then create a date-property-triggered flow on it, set to send before the date and repeat every year.
Omnisend: use the birthday workflow template, which reads the birthday field from your forms.
Klaviyo settings that decide how it lands
Three settings do most of the work. Send in the recipient's own time zone and early in the day, so the email is waiting when they wake up rather than arriving the evening before. Set the flow to repeat every year, or it runs once and stops. And put a message on the birthday itself even when the gift email goes earlier. source, checked 25 September 2026
If the date field does not appear when you pick the trigger, the usual cause is format: the dates were stored as text rather than as dates. Fix the form field and re-import rather than building around it. source, checked 25 September 2026
Omnisend
Omnisend groups birthday emails under its Special Occasions presets, which can send before, on or after the date. Pick the before-and-on version to match the two emails above. source, checked 25 September 2026
What to measure
- Share of your list with a birthday on file
- Redemption rate of the gift
- Unsubscribe rate. It should be very low. If not, look at tone
When hardly anyone has a birthday on file
If the share of your list with a birthday is small, the flow is not the problem. Ask again where people are already happy with you: the post-purchase check-in email is a good place, because the customer has just had a good experience and the question reads as a thank you rather than data collection. Say why you are asking and that you only need the day and month.
Questions people ask
How do I collect birthdays?
Ask for month and day, not year, on your signup form or in a post-purchase email, and say why: so you can send something on their birthday.
When should the birthday email arrive?
A few days before gives time to use a gift or offer. On the day feels more personal. Many stores send both: one before, one on the day.
Can the flow start before the birthday itself?
Yes. Starting early is useful when the gift needs planning, like an in-store offer. You then follow up on the day with the birthday wish and a reminder of the gift. source, checked 25 September 2026
Should the gift be the same for everyone?
It does not have to be. Once you know what someone has bought, split the flow so the suggested product matches their past orders instead of your bestseller. source, checked 25 September 2026
How Tilly builds it
Tilly writes the birthday emails in your brand voice and picks the suggested product from each customer's past orders.
Two variations worth knowing
A half-birthday email reaches people at a time nobody else is writing to them. It uses the same date field with the start moved half a year earlier, and it works best as one light message rather than a second gift. source, checked 25 September 2026
If Tilly writes your birthday emails, the flow itself is built in Klaviyo by hand. Klaviyo does not let an app start a flow from a date on the customer record, so Tilly gives you the finished emails rather than a draft flow, and says so before you try to publish.
See this on your own store
Paste your store URL. The first pass takes about a minute and needs no account. Save a card (nothing is charged) and Tilly reads the whole store and works out who buys from you.