Birthday messages and the birthday offer

Active patients with a date of birth on file and marketing email consent can receive a warm birthday message on the day, and you can optionally include a discount code to turn the greeting into bookings.

The greeting

On the patient's birthday, from 8am UK time, they receive the birthday email, and a text too if they have opted in to marketing SMS. It is a marketing message, so it only goes to patients who have opted in to marketing email, and each patient is greeted at most once a year. Edit the wording on the Birthday greeting card under Settings > Messaging, in the Marketing section. The email includes a Book online button through to your online booking page.

Your Send automatically switch and the separate email and SMS channel switches still apply. Texts also need a usable phone number and enough SMS credits, and automated-message preferences are respected.

The birthday offer

In Settings > Messaging, the Birthday offer card adds a unique, single-use discount code to each birthday email:

1. Tick Include a birthday discount code.
2. Choose the Discount type: an amount off in your clinic's currency, or a percentage off, and enter the amount.
3. Set how many days the code stays valid in Valid for (days).
4. Press Save.

Each patient gets their own code, in the form BDAY-XXXXXXXX, usable once, tied to them and expiring after the validity period. The email states the amount or percentage and the expiry date automatically, for example "here is 10% off your next treatment". By default the offer is added to the end of the birthday email. To choose where it appears, put {birthday_offer} in your birthday email wording and it is inserted there instead.

How the discount behaves

The code comes off the patient's next treatment price. The booking reservation fee is unchanged; the discount applies to the treatment balance, so your reservation fee protection stays intact. Because each code is single-use and personal, it cannot be shared around or used twice.

Previewing it with a test email

If you send yourself a test of the birthday email, it shows an example code so you can see the layout. Real birthday emails each contain their own unique code for the individual patient. The birthday text message is the greeting alone, unless you put {birthday_offer} in its wording, in which case the same offer sentence is included in the text.