# Birthday & Milestone Page: https://alidemirbas.com.tr/en/lab/journeys/milestone-recognition Birthday or milestone reached → eligibility check → acknowledge or exit ## Purpose Recognise a defined birthday or customer milestone with one relevant message. Goal: Progression & Milestone · Category: Loyalty & Relationship ## Steps - **Trigger**: Birthday or defined customer milestone is reached - **Decision**: Is this milestone eligible to be acknowledged? - Yes: Email: Acknowledge the birthday or milestone with the benefit defined for it - No: Journey ends - **Action**: Email: Acknowledge the birthday or milestone with the benefit defined for it - **Exit**: Journey ends ## Guardrails - Do not fabricate a milestone or benefit. - Send once for each defined milestone occurrence. ## Core rule Milestone communication should be tied to a real, defined event. ## When to set it up Consider this journey when many customer records hold a birthday the person supplied or a defined milestone their own record has reached. First make sure the date comes from a reliable source, the same milestone is deduplicated, email subscription is known, and any benefit's eligibility, validity and redemption terms can be passed into the message; set up the shared exclusion group with First Purchase Anniversary as well. If dates are missing or estimated, fix the collection flow first and never recognize a guessed date; if the aim is to sell a product, leave the personal date alone and use Cross-Sell / Complementary Offer. ## How to set it up - **Trigger and entry**: A defined birthday or customer milestone being reached opens the journey. Randomly split the people who pass the eligibility check into the journey group and a control group kept free of this flow's email. - **Who must not enter**: Nobody with an unverified or estimated date enters, and a second record of the same event is deduplicated. A person whose First Purchase Anniversary falls in the same window gets one recognition only; in the exclusion group this journey takes priority and the anniversary yields. This message never stands in for Loyalty Tier Change. - **Timing and channels**: One touch only: when the date arrives, the journey checks that this milestone is eligible to be acknowledged, then sends one email that states the defined benefit with its real terms. Where no benefit is defined, the message only recognizes the date; no ungranted reward or unrelated product offer is added. - **Exit and handoff**: Sending the email ends the journey; when the milestone is not eligible it ends without a message. Nothing is handed off and the same event never re-enters; next year, or the next milestone, opens a new instance. - **Frequency and consent**: Only one email goes out per defined event, with no reminder. Without an email subscription nothing is sent and no other channel is tried. ## How to measure success **Incremental benefit redemption rate vs control**: The measure is how much more often the group that was told about a benefit the program already grants goes on to use it, compared with the control group; email opens do not count, and where no benefit exists, use the active-relationship share in the same frame. Of everyone assigned to the two groups at entry, the share who use the benefit tied to the milestone within the same follow-up window after assignment; the program's rule grants the benefit to both groups, the control group simply is not told. Delivery or opening of the email does not change the denominator. Also track: - **Milestone-message engagement rate**: Opens and link clicks on the email as a share of recipients; read them as a relationship signal, not as proof that the benefit was used or loyalty was won. - **Share dropped at eligibility**: Events whose date arrives but that close without a message because contact was not eligible, as a share; if it is high, review the date source, deduplication and subscription data. - **Email unsubscribes and complaints**: Watch unsubscribes and spam complaints after the recognition; if an offer was attached to a personal date, the rise shows here. - **Anniversaries that yielded**: Count First Purchase Anniversary messages that yielded in the same window because of this recognition; credit those people's outcome here, not to that journey. ## What to watch when reading the result - If benefit use in the journey group is no higher than in the control group, telling people did not change behavior, and no open rate justifies growing the journey. Inventing a new reward or attaching a product offer to fix that is not a solution; it is the exact failure the rule forbids. - Scope here is one email, the eligibility check and the benefit terms the program defines. Because First Purchase Anniversary yields in the same window, those people's benefit use and activity are credited only to this journey; the new rights of someone whose tier changed belong to Loyalty Tier Change, so do not count them here. - Should the gap stay small or unclear, enter each group's people and benefit redemptions into the [A/B test significance calculator](https://alidemirbas.com.tr/en/calculators/ab-test); since these dates come rarely for any one person, add the following cycles to the same read when it is not significant, rather than changing the message every cycle. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What data should birthday or milestone automation use? Use an actual date or defined event from appropriately provided information or a reliable record. Do not invent missing dates. Deduplicate the milestone. This example sends one eligible email and ends. ### Should every milestone recipient receive the same benefit? Only if the program genuinely grants the same benefit. Reflect differences in eligibility, validity and redemption terms. Do not invent an ungranted birthday reward or use a personal date to push unrelated products.