Why don't birthday coupons resend each year?

[sugarshakercafe]

Hi! I could not find an answer anywhere so hoping someone can help!
We have had the birthday text coupon automation set up and it's great!....for the first initial birthday date. But then it does not seem to send it for the next birthday the following year.

I've had customers complain to us about not getting their birthday text this year (and I have manually double checked the system to 1. see if their birthday was collected, and 2. to verify if a coupon was not sent). I have my own number signed up so I can always test these systems, so I can verify on my end that I also do not get a reocurring birthday text.

We are a small coffee shop, so the 'free birthday drink' reward is a very important coupon to our customers😉

Does the birthday campaign not work as a reoccuring coupon?

If so, is there a way to fix this, or workaround it?

I fear having to cancel the campaign and restart it each year as I don't want to accidentally cancel a coupon someone currently has for their birthday.

[Sammie_C · Accepted solution]

Hi @sugarshakercafe, thank you for your post!

I went ahead and reached out to our Marketing team, who informed me that the way the automation is setup currently is that only one birthday text is expected to be sent out. At this time, there is not a way to automatically have subsequent messages sent out after the initial message.

This is something our engineers are aware of and hopefully sometime soon there will be a function to set this up, but unfortunately not at this time. So we appreciate you bringing this to our attention!

Please let us know if you have any other questions or concerns in the meantime.

[WoodCandleCo]

This is the first I'm hearing about this limitation! That you for bringing it up @sugarshakercafe!

@Sammie_C Can you confirm what happens when we cancel and restart the automation? Does it cancel out any current discounts that are pending for customers? Does Square have a workaround for this? If cancelling deactivates pending unredeemed goodies, it almost renders the birthday automation useless...

@Summer2024 you seem to know where all the wizards with a pink feather are hiding in forest, lol! Do you have any insight on moving this along with the engineers?

[Sammie_C]

Thank you for reaching out, @WoodCandleCo. We really appreciate your feedback and I went ahead and escalated it to the corresponding team. I just checked with that team to take a look into this as well and they said that when automations are cancelled, that all existing coupons are cancelled as well. There aren't really any workarounds at this time, besides just restarting the campaign once the coupon has been used.

They also mentioned that unfortunately they do not have a timeline for when changes to this birthday text process will be implemented, but changes are in process and they are aware of this issue. I wish I could provide more exact information with a timeline, but they are unable to provide additional information at this time.

If you know of any workarounds or anything else that might be helpful, feel free to let us know, @Summer2024.

[WoodCandleCo]

Do we know if it sends emails each year and this only impacts texts? Thanks!

[Sammie_C]

@WoodCandleCo, it looks like this is just affecting text messages, not emails.

[VanKalkerFarms]

gotta say that only sending birthday text once seems kinda crazy that it was implemented that way.  I would definitely assume as a customer signing up (and as the company sending coupons) it would happen yearly.

[Sammie_C]

I understand, @VanKalkerFarms. I do not have specifics on why it is currently set up this way. It could be something as simple as a limitation within our system and our engineers are actively looking for a way around that.