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leadliaisonleadliaison 

Email Message to Lead/Contact Based on Birthdate Field

Hello,

 

Could someone help me implement a workflow rule that will send an email to a Lead/Contact based on the "Birthdate" standard field? We'd like to send them an email the day before their birthday if possible. We're fairly new to formulas so specific instructions would be much appreciated. 

 

Thank you!

phiberoptikphiberoptik

Leads do not have a standard BirthDate field, but Contacts do.

 

1. Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Workflows & Approvals > Workflow Rules. Create a new rule on the object Contact.

 

2. Name the rule, set the Evaluation Criteria to When a record is created, or when a record is edited and did not previously meet the rule criteria. Set the Rule Criteria to Run this rule if the following formula evaluates to true and use this formula: Birthdate -1 = TODAY(). Click Save & Next.

 

3. Click Add Workflow Action, then click New Email Alert.

 

4. Complete all required fields. You will need to already have an Email Template created for the message you send to them. Set Recipient Type to Email Field: Email. Save & Activate.
leadliaisonleadliaison

Hi xphiberoptikx,

 

I setup the workflow as you suggested above. I used myself as the contact. The system did not send me the happy birthday email. It seems it only left an alert/reminder. Below if the response from our sales person. We want an email to automatically go out to the contact who has the birthday. Am I doing something wrong?

 

"I didn’t get an email. It came up as an alert (or reminder) like it came from Outlook as a reminder meeting. It is also on my calendar as it being your birthday on the 13th."

 
phiberoptikphiberoptik

Nothing in my steps would have created an alert/reminder. Can you please upload a screenshot of your workflow rule as well as your workflow action?
leadliaisonleadliaison

You bet. I created a short video of the screenshots for you since I couldn't find a way to upload them to the forum:

 

http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cl6oosRQ0 

 
phiberoptikphiberoptik

Thank you for this. I have replicated exactly what you have done and it worked successfully for me. Can you confirm that the birthdate of the Contact you are testing this on was one day after the day you did the test?

 

I just changed a Contact's birthday to 10/16/2012 and when I hit Save, I immediately had an email in my inbox that represented the birthday email.

 

Also, can you show me what your reminder looked like that you received? To add a screenshot, you just need to save it as a .gif or .jpg and then click the landscape button above in the RTF toolbar (looks like a tree) and upload it from there.
leadliaisonleadliaison

I checked the contact, I confirm the date was one day *after* the day I ran the test; however, the year of the birthday was 2011! This won't work for us as it would be impossible to manage birthdays to update them so the birthday year was always in the current year. What if there were 1,000s of birthdays in the system? 

 

How can we change the rule so it looks at only the month/day and ignores the year?
phiberoptikphiberoptik

Great point! Sorry for overlooking that...

 

Birthdate -1 = DATE(YEAR(Birthdate), MONTH(TODAY()), DAY(TODAY()))

 

This compares the Birthdate minus a day to a compiled date of today's month, today's day, and the year of the birthdate.

 

Test this and make sure my logic is correct.

 

 
leadliaisonleadliaison

I tested the new formula, works great! I assume this will trigger every year? In other words, the system won't stop if it triggers once?
phiberoptikphiberoptik

You are correct. The YEAR(Birthdate) piece of the formula will essentially take the year out of the equation, so every year it will just match on month and day.