Every year, you can guarantee two things: You’ll have a birthday and Marigold Engage by Sailthru will evaluate 250 retailers on their personalized marketing capabilities. Year after year, we notice that very few brands send customers birthday emails. And we always wonder why.

Compared with the average marketing email, birthday messages boast 179% more unique clickthrough rates and 342% more revenue. Birthday emails are rare enough that sending one at all can be considered a best practice. If you’re doing it already, great! Here are five best practices to help give yourself the gifts of increased loyalty and increased email revenue:

Collect That Data

Birthdays are a strong data set for fostering a personalized customer experience and developing segmentation strategy. For example, a brand like The Home Depot isn’t likely to market patio furniture to a 22-year-old in New York City. If your signup page doesn’t collect date of birth, email is a great place to incentivize customers to complete their profiles.

MZ Wallace does this well, asking MZWRewards members to add their birthdays to their profiles. It’s always a good idea to let people know what you plan to do with their data; in this case, MZ Wallace plans to send a treat.

Show Appreciation, With a Twist

Birthday emails often include an incentive, and they’re nearly six times more likely than other marketing emails to result in a purchase. Coincidence? Make the most of that sky-high engagement by going beyond a generic discount, such as a time-bound discount to drive urgency or non-monetary perks like free shipping or bonus loyalty points.

When it’s a customer’s birthday, ASOS incentivizes a quick conversion, sending a discount that’s good for the next week.

Include Relevant Recommendations

With such high conversion rates, birthday emails have extraordinarily valuable real estate. Make purchasing easier by recommending relevant products, such as something they’re predicted to purchase in the future or an item that complements one they already have. You’re potentially streamlining a sale, while also improving upon the inherent personalization of these messages.

Not only does Sephora send Beauty Insiders a gift, but the personalization pro includes some personalized product recommendations for good measure.

Think Outside the Birthday Box

Everyone has only one birthday, but you can keep the party going year-round. You can celebrate half birthdays, anniversaries or even other people’s birthdays. According to market research firm Mintel, 78% of consumers give birthday gifts. Shopping for others generally means different purchase behaviors, so it’s a good idea to recommend best sellers or trending items, or products suited for that particular time of year.

Astrology is all the rage and Alex and Ani capitalizes on that trend. You may not be a Capricorn, but maybe you’re looking for the perfect gift for one.

Make Your Birthdays Emails a Series

Personalized triggered messages work best as a series and birthdays are a natural segue into any of the other common flows. Discounts often accompany winback messages to re-engage lapsed customers, for example. Why not combine that promotion with a birthday email? If they don’t buy, follow up. If they do buy, still follow up with post-purchase messaging, covering all your bases for increasing revenue with email.

For their birthdays, Ultamate Rewards members receive double points on every purchase that month. Ulta sends emails to let members know and then follows up a few weeks later if they haven’t taken advantage of that offer.

Birthday emails are just one type of triggered message, which drive more than three-quarters of retailers’ email ROI. To learn more about these behavior-based emails, download our Ultimate Playbook for Triggered Messages.