By: Eric Yager

Recently, on The CBS Morning Show a segment was aired highlighting retailers and restaurants that use a customer’s birthday as a traffic driver into their locations. Customers who sign up for birthday rewards programs will receive an offer to pick up a free or discounted product on or around their birthday. Because everyone has a birthday, it’s an easy incentive to establish and manage.

The intention of these offers is to drive traffic back into the locations – which ultimately presents the retailer an opportunity to convert that birthday visit into an incremental sale while also thanking them for being a loyal customer during a one-on-one exchange. Some birthday incentive programs are imbedded directly into a retailer’s existing loyalty program. Effective loyalty programs will have tracking mechanisms in place to understand who is redeeming their offers so that the impact of the program on sales can be measured.  Follow the link below to view the clip that aired highlighting retailers running birthday programs.

Link to embed: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6907647n