Birthday messages for customers: ready-made wishes, a gift and timing

Birthday messages for customers: why send them and who they suit

Sending birthday messages to customers means sending, once a year, a message about them rather than about you: that is why it is one of the few messages from a business that customers are happy to read. If the wishes come with a small gift to collect, they also become a real reason to drop in.

They work best where the relationship is personal and visits are regular: at the hair salon, the barber’s, the beauty salon, the gym, the café round the corner or the pastry shop. They matter less where customers are passing through, as in a tourist area, because someone who gets your wishes is unlikely to come back.

Birthday wishes do not replace a good loyalty card, they complete it: a customer who comes often deserves a reward for the visits, one who has a birthday deserves a little extra. For the full picture, read the guide how to retain customers.

Birthday wishes for customers: examples to copy

A good birthday message for a customer has three parts: their name, the wishes and, if there is one, the gift with how and when to collect it. It should sound like the person the customer sees at the counter, not like a flyer, and stay short, because it is often read from a notification.

The table collects messages we wrote, by tone and type of business: copy them, change the name and adapt them to what you sell. The gift is an example; the section on gifts further down explains how to choose one.

When to send birthday messages to customers: on the day or a few days before?

On the day, in the morning, works where people drop in without an appointment, as at a café or a pastry shop; a few days before works better where people need to book, as at a hair salon or a restaurant, because the customer has time to find a free slot before the celebration.

Avoid evenings and nights: a message from a business at 11 pm is a nuisance even when it brings birthday wishes. And decide in advance what to do for customers born on 29 February, who celebrate on 28 February or 1 March in years that are not leap years.

Birthday gifts for customers: which to choose and how long they should last

The right birthday gift for a customer costs you little, is worth something to them and is collected with a visit: a house product, a few extra stamps or points on the card, a short service. A validity of one or two weeks leaves time to drop in without the gift being forgotten.

A hypothetical sum to see what it costs: if 300 customers have given you their date of birth, on average 25 have a birthday each month. If the gift is a coffee that costs you €0.40 and one in two collects it, you spend about €5 a month. Work it out with your own numbers in the reward cost calculator; more ideas are in the guide to loyalty card reward ideas.

If the gift depends on a purchase, for example a discount only when spending a set amount, ask your accountant whether it becomes a prize promotion under Italian law: the rules are in the guide to loyalty card rules in Italy.

Birthday messages and privacy: date of birth and consent to offers

To send birthday messages to customers you need their date of birth, and you should ask for it as optional information, explaining in your privacy notice that it is used for the wishes and any gift. Italy’s data protection authority, the Garante, in its decision on loyalty cards of 24 February 2005, requires data to be «relevant and not excessive» for the purposes.

The same decision separates loyalty in the strict sense from marketing: marketing needs consent that is «specific, informed and separate», and joining the card cannot depend on that consent. A birthday message with a gift or an invitation to drop in promotes your business, so the cautious choice is to send it only to customers who agreed to your offers. The decision predates the GDPR and cites articles of the Italian Privacy Code that were later amended.

For email, SMS and similar messages, Article 130 of the Italian Privacy Code requires consent for commercial communications; paragraph 4 provides a limited exception for a customer’s email used for products or services similar to those bought, if the customer, once informed, does not object. For minors, Article 2-quinquies sets 14 as the age at which they can give consent on their own for information society services; below that age, consent must come from whoever holds parental responsibility.

This guide is not legal advice; outside Italy, check your own national rules. For the privacy notice and consents of your card, read the guide loyalty cards and the GDPR and ask whoever handles privacy for you.

SMS, email, WhatsApp or a Wallet card: how to send birthday messages

The channel for birthday messages to customers depends on the contact details you have and the time you want to spend: each channel needs different information and, for a promotional message, consent. The table compares the four most common routes for a local business.

Automatic birthday messages with Iterum: how they work

In Iterum (by FIDUS), birthday wishes are an automation, «Buon compleanno» («Happy birthday»), switched off until you turn it on from Messaggi → Automazioni (Messages → Automations). You write your own text, up to 140 characters with a title of up to 40, and the customer’s name and your business’s name are filled in automatically. How many automations you can keep on at once depends on the plan: see pricing.

You choose when it arrives: on the birthday or 1, 3 or 7 days before. The message goes out from 10 am, Rome time, and never between 9 pm and 9 am; customers born on 29 February receive it on 28 February in years that are not leap years, and each customer receives birthday wishes once a year.

If you like, add a gift: from 1 to 10 stamps, from 1 to 1,000 points or a free item with a name you choose, valid for 7, 14, 30 or 60 days or with no expiry. The gift arrives on the customer’s card together with the wishes.

The wishes arrive as a message on the card saved in Apple Wallet or Google Wallet, and only for customers who gave their date of birth and turned on your offers; customers who have not saved the card in their Wallet do not receive them, and Iterum asks for no consent from anyone under 14. There is also a rhythm: at most one automatic message every 3 days per customer, and none in the 24 hours after a manual message from you. Automations do not use up the plan’s monthly messages, and on the same page you see the sends of the last 30 days and how many customers came back within 14 days.

Customers enter their date of birth themselves in the card’s profile, with day, month and year, and can remove it whenever they like. To encourage them, you can give stamps or points to customers who complete their profile with first name, last name, birthday and phone. With manual messages you can also write to customers whose birthday is this month or in the next 7 days.

Try it with the 7-day free trial: you pay €0 today, a payment card is required and the chosen plan continues after the trial unless you cancel. How customers save the card is explained in the guide to the Apple Wallet loyalty card.

Mistakes to avoid in birthday messages to customers

The most common mistakes in birthday messages to customers turn a welcome message into an annoying one, and they almost always come from rules nobody decided in advance. For customers who have not been in for months, birthday wishes are not enough: for them there is the guide how to win back lost customers.

• Sending them to everyone, including customers who did not agree to receive your offers.
• Making the date of birth compulsory to get the card.
• A gift with no expiry that nobody remembers, or one valid for a single day.
• Flyer-style copy: «Grab the discount now!» does not sound like birthday wishes.
• Sending them late in the evening or at night.
• Not telling the staff: the customer comes in for the gift and nobody at the counter knows about it.

Sources and method

Sources read on 26 October 2026: Garante per la protezione dei dati personali, «Fidelity card» e garanzie per i consumatori, decision of 24 February 2005, paragraphs 2 and 7 (in Italian); Legislative Decree no. 196 of 30 June 2003, Article 130, on Normattiva (in Italian); Article 2-quinquies, on Normattiva (in Italian).

The birthday messages are written by us and the names are made up; gifts and sums are hypothetical examples, not data from real businesses. The summaries of the rules and their English renderings are ours and do not replace the official Italian text. The information about Iterum describes the product as of 26 October 2026 and does not promise more customers.