How to Send Birthday Emails with Mailchimp and Loyalty Program for WooCommerce

Loyalty Program for WooCommerce automatically awards points to customers on their birthday. With the Mailchimp integration, the customer’s birthday is also synced to their Mailchimp profile the moment they save it in their account — so you can build a birthday email automation in Mailchimp that fires on the right day, every year.

Prerequisites

• Mailchimp integration enabled under Loyalty Program → Settings → Integrations → Mailchimp with a valid API key and Audience (List) ID.
• Birthday points action enabled under Loyalty Program → Settings → Earning Points — this activates the birthday field on the customer account page.
• A Mailchimp account with a Standard or Premium plan (required for Customer Journeys).

How Birthday Sync Works

When a customer enters and saves their birthday on the WooCommerce My Account → Account Details page, the plugin immediately syncs that date to their Mailchimp contact as the BIRTHDAY merge field (in MM/DD format, which is the format Mailchimp’s native birthday field expects). No manual export or import is needed — it happens automatically in the background.

Step 1: Add a BIRTHDAY Merge Field to Your Mailchimp Audience

Mailchimp needs a birthday merge field in your audience before it can store the synced date. To check or add it:

1. In Mailchimp, go to Audience → Manage Audience → Settings.
2. Click Audience fields and *|MERGE|* tags.
3. Look for a field with the tag BIRTHDAY. If it already exists, you are done with this step.
4. If it does not exist, click Add A Field, choose Birthday as the field type, and set the merge tag to BIRTHDAY.
5. Save changes.

Step 2: Have Customers Save Their Birthday

Customers enter their birthday on the My Account → Account Details page. The birthday field appears automatically once the birthday points action is enabled in the plugin settings. As soon as a customer saves their birthday, it is pushed to Mailchimp and the BIRTHDAY merge field on their contact profile is updated.

You can encourage customers to add their birthday by mentioning the birthday points bonus in your loyalty program page or in a welcome email.

Step 3: Create a Birthday Customer Journey in Mailchimp

Once birthdays are syncing to Mailchimp, set up an automated birthday email:

1. In Mailchimp, go to Automations → Customer Journeys and click Create Journey.
2. Give the journey a name (e.g. “Birthday Email”) and select your audience.
3. For the starting point, choose Date-based as the trigger type.
4. Select Contact’s birthday (or select the BIRTHDAY merge field if “Contact’s birthday” is not listed as a preset).
5. Set the timing — for example, On the day or 1 day before the birthday date.
6. Add a Send Email action and design your birthday email. A typical birthday email includes:
   • A personalised greeting using the *|FNAME|* merge tag
   • A reminder that birthday points have been awarded to their account
   • A CTA button linking to your loyalty program page
   • An optional exclusive birthday discount code
7. Activate the journey.

What the Customer Receives

On (or around) their birthday, the customer receives your email automatically. At the same time, the loyalty plugin’s daily cron awards them their birthday points. The two processes are independent — the plugin handles the points, Mailchimp handles the email — so both happen reliably without any additional configuration.