How To Easily Set Up Birthday Emails To Your Members

Birthdays are funny; every single person on the planet has one, and they are universally celebrated across all cultures. Yet what are we really celebrating, that your mother gave birth to you however many years ago on that day? If anything, we should be celebrating our mothers on our birthdays, not us. I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel like I had a particularly active role in my birth. I mean, sure, I was there, but I wasn’t really pulling my weight.  

Maybe we are celebrating that we have managed another lap around the sun without dying. It seems slightly macabre, but I’m here for it. Or maybe we are just celebrating to distract the person having the birthday from the inevitable existential crisis that comes along with getting another year older. A sort of, “Yes, you are one year closer to crumbling into dust, but here’s cake so try not to dwell on it,”. 

 

 

No matter why we celebrate birthdays, celebrate them we do. And in all honesty, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Birthdays are a time to make the people you care about feel special and appreciated; they are a time to remind the people we love that we are glad that they are in our lives. 

While you probably don’t love your club members, you certainly appreciate them and want them to stick around for longer. So, today, let’s talk about why you should send your members birthday emails and how you can use the Member Jungle system to do so in an easy and efficient way.

Why You Should Send Your Members Birthday Emails 

Everyone deserves to feel appreciated on their birthday. It's a day often filled with emotion, and a simple acknowledgment can go a long way in showing your members you care. Remembering and celebrating their birthdays strengthens their connection to your club and fosters a sense of belonging. After all, who doesn't love knowing that others are thinking of them on their special day, no matter how old they are?

I always think of the episode of the Grand Tour where Richard Hammond and James May pretend to forget Jeremy Clarkson's birthday, only to end up throwing him a surprise party. 

When Clarkson arrives at the party, he opens the door to his car and says, "you remembered," with the most adorable little smile. It doesn't matter how old he is or how they are his mates, so they've deliberately planned a bad party with deep-fried spaghetti and a misspelled sign. In that moment, that grown man is just a happy little kid who is thrilled his friends remembered his birthday.    

 

 

That is my point that just doing a little thing for your members on their birthday can go a long way to building that connection and making them feel appreciated. 

I did, of course, also get a screenshot of the little smile I was talking about, though I will admit that it doesn’t translate brilliantly in the still image. 

 

  

 

How To Use Member Jungle To Send Automated Birthday Emails To Members

Now that we’ve covered why you should send birthday emails to members, let’s look at how to do this with Member Jungle. The good news is that this is pretty easy. 

Below, you will find a video giving a detailed breakdown of how to search for members by date of birth and then send them birthday emails. I’m not going to cover too much of the same ground in this article, but I will give you a brief overview. 

 

 

The first step is to open up the back end of your Member Jungle site; click on the Membership tab at the top (it’s the one with a Zebra) and then click on “Members” in the left-hand column.

From here, you will see the page below, on which you just need to click the “Advanced Search” option, which I have circled. 
 

 

Once you click on “Advanced Search,” the below member search window will open. This window allows you to search your membership database by any metric that you track, such as membership level, expiry date, etc. In this case, we just need to search for members by date of birth. 

 

 

Once you’ve done that, you will get a list of all members having a birthday in that time period, and you will also be given the option to send a bulk email to those members. 

 

 

I'd recommend that at the start of each month, search for members celebrating birthdays that month. From there, you can send a bulk email wishing them a happy birthday for their celebration this month.

Of course, with dynamic fields, each email can be personalised with the member's name and even their birthdate, so it feels like a genuine, individual message. While sending actual individual emails to every member would be ideal, it's simply not feasible with a large membership base. This approach strikes a balance between personalisation and efficiency, allowing you to acknowledge birthdays in a meaningful way without dedicating excessive time to individual emails.

For example, I searched on my trial site for members whose birthdays were in October; I had three of them, so I was then able to put together this personalised email using dynamic fields to go out to those members. 

 

 

That is obviously a very quick version of the email you would send, but doing things this way allows you to send personalised birthday emails to all of your members with just 12 emails, one for each month. 

At the start of each month, search your members by birthday, write a birthday email mentioning the month so it feels a little more personalised, add a few dynamic fields, and bingo bango, you’ve wished thousands of members a personalised happy birthday with almost no work or effort. 

Finally, let’s quickly move on to a way to make writing birthday emails easier and more engaging than ever. 

How To Use AI To Make Writing Birthday Emails Easier Than Ever Before

Look, we all knew that AI was going to make an appearance in this article like it does in seemingly everything these days. But in this case, it’s for good reason. Artificial intelligence word generators like ChatGPT and Google Gemini are amazing for making the process of writing things like emails quicker and more engaging. 

For example, I entered the following prompt into Google Gemini: “Write a generic birthday email to members of my kayaking club who are born in June, include dynamic fields,” 

This was the result that it gave me: 

 

 

 

First of all, the prompt that I gave was very simple, and I would thoroughly recommend using more detailed ones. Still, even with that super simple prompt, we got an excellent result. 

With some light editing, we could have this looking perfect and ready to send in no time. The main two things I'd change would be to use a few fewer exclamation marks, and I'd address the fact that the AI has suggested that we give members some sort of birthday offer. That's a great idea, but if your club isn't doing it, you just need to remove that paragraph.

The only other thing we'd need to do is replace their square brackets with either the actual words or real dynamic fields. AI will mimic a dynamic field, but you will have to actually add it from Member Jungle for it to work like one.

That is obviously a really brief overview of how to use AI to generate content for your club, like birthday emails. For a much deeper dive into the subject, check out How To Use AI To Generate Content For Your Club's Website.

What Are Your Next Steps In Sending Easy Birthday Emails With Member Jungle?  

Honestly, if you’re already a Member Jungle customer, the only next step is to jump into the system and start playing around with searching for members by date of birth and sending emails. If you haven’t already read it, do read the AI article I mentioned above; it should be very helpful. How To Use AI To Generate Content For Your Club’s Website.

If this is your first time hearing about Member Jungle, check out How Does Member Jungle’s Membership Management System Work?