Birthday Automations

Birthday messages are impactful touchpoints when nurturing relationships. Daily responsibilities and tasks make it easy to let our own friends and family members' birthdays slip past!

Levitate Birthday Automations remove the human responsibility of remembering and sending birthday messages. Simply set up the birthday email or text message, enable automatic sending, and never worry about missing a birthday again!

Below is a video detailing how Birthday Automations can be set up, tied to the Birthday dashboard card, and even be made fully automatic.

Step-By-Step

If your contacts have birthdates on their contact profiles, you'll see a dashboard card alerting you of upcoming birthdays! Through this dashboard card, you can either set up manual sends or use an automation to send out birthday messages— alternately, you can also make the automation fully hands off by setting it up to go out without any approval. Here's how to set up a birthday automation:

From the dashboard, you can access the upcoming birthday dashboard card and choose to send via automation

Clicking the card opens a send window. The dropdown at the top left is where you'll choose what to send: a birthday template, or an automation if your account has automations.

To create a birthday automation, you'll go to Automations using the navigation menu on the left-hand side of Levitate.

Note: Automations are available on Business plans and above. If you don't see Automations in the left menu, contact Support.

From there, you will click Create Automation.

Just as a reminder: By default, only account Admins can create automations. If your account uses user group permissions, users in a group with the Automation write permission can create them too.

From here, you will choose Birthday Automation

Just like with other automations, you can name the automation and enable or disable automation-wide settings in the trigger settings. To make the automation fully hands off, check Automatically approve Automations triggered by birthdays. Once the automation is enabled, the birthday dashboard card no longer shows for any user on the account, and upcoming birthdays start the automation automatically. Contacts who have unsubscribed are not included.

Once you have your settings configured, you can set up steps to go out based on the birthdate. Send before, on, or even after the birthdate using Levitate automation steps.

Once you've configured these steps, and you're all set, click Enable Automation to publish. If you edit the automation later, click Publish Changes to apply your edits. If you'd like to use it through the dashboard card, just go back through the birthday dashboard card and choose the automation you've just created.

Wanting to send birthday communications specific to turning a certain age? Read more here.

Read more about Automation settings and logic here!

FAQs

Q: Why do some contacts not show a green "Sent" checkmark in the birthday email report even though the automation is set up correctly?

A: You'll find the birthday report under Reporting > Birthday Report. There are a few common reasons a contact may not show a Sent status in it. The contact may not have an email address on their profile, in which case the send will be recorded as failed. The contact may have previously bounced or unsubscribed, which prevents future sends. The selected date range in the report may not yet include that contact's birthday — if their birthday falls outside the filtered window, no send record will appear. Finally, if the automation step has tag-based contact filters configured, a contact that does not meet those filter criteria will be skipped for that step. Checking the contact's profile and verifying the report date range are good first steps when troubleshooting a missing Sent status.

Q: I updated my email signature in Settings, but my birthday automation emails are still using the old signature. How do I update it?

A: Birthday automation emails use the sender's default signature at the time each email sends, so updating your default signature in Settings applies to emails that haven't gone out yet. If an email step was set to use a specific signature, it keeps that signature. If your emails still show the old signature, contact your Success Specialist or Levitate Support so they can check the affected steps.

Q: I am an admin but I cannot see the birthday dashboard card. Why might it not appear?

A: The birthday dashboard card appears when Levitate detects contacts with upcoming birthdates on their profiles. If the card is not showing, the most common reasons are: none of the contacts you can see have a birthday in the next 45 days (contacts who have unsubscribed, or who can't receive an email, text, or card, aren't counted); the display settings Support has set for your account limit which contacts' birthdays you see; or the birthday automation is configured to run fully automatically, which hides the dashboard card and sends without requiring approval (see the automation setup steps above). If your contacts have birthdates recorded and the dashboard card still does not appear, contact our Support team at support@levitateapp.com and they can verify whether the birthday dashboard card needs to be enabled for your account.

Q: If I update an image or GIF in a birthday automation template, will contacts whose automations are already in progress receive the updated content?

A: No. When a birthday automation starts for a contact, each step is created from a snapshot of the template as it exists at that moment. Updating the template afterward — including swapping an image or GIF — does not affect automations that are already in progress. Those contacts will continue through the steps that were locked in when their automation started.

Q: A contact's birthday automation started before I updated the template image. How do I get them to receive the updated version?

A: To have a contact receive the updated template content, their current automation instance must be cancelled and then restarted so a fresh set of steps is created from the current template. If you need to cancel and restart birthday automations for one or more contacts, reach out to Levitate Support at support@levitateapp.com — the Support team can cancel the affected contacts' in-progress automations and reschedule them using the updated template.

Q: Why does the birthday automation greet my contact by their legal name (such as "Bryant") instead of the name they go by (such as "BT"), and how do I fix it?

A: Birthday automation emails use the {{first name}} merge field, which pulls from the "First Name" field on the contact's Levitate profile. If the contact's birthday was synced from an integration with its own name attached, that name is used instead. If the First Name field contains the contact's legal first name rather than the name they prefer, the birthday greeting will use the legal name. There is no separate preferred name or nickname merge field available in the email editor. To fix this for a specific contact, open their profile, click the Edit button in the contact information section, and update the First Name field to the name you want to appear in the greeting. If the greeting still doesn't change, the name may be coming from your integration's birthday record; contact Support for help.