Eloqua popular segments - Birthday
Some departments like to recognize their constituent's birthdays with an email. The following provides the steps to set up a daily evaluation segment, as well as the campaign settings necessary to automate this process.
(Right-click and select View Image to watch a larger version of the animated gifs below.)
Building the birthday segment
1) Create a new segment, choose the Filter Criteria option, and select Compare Contact Fields (either by double-clicking or dragging/dropping onto the canvas).
2) Double-click on the criteria to open the popup window and choose the Date of birth field.
NOTE: There are two birthday fields in the dropdown menu. The first is a native Eloqua field - Date of Birth ('Birth' is capitalized). This field does not contain accurate data. Unfortunately, we cannot remove it, as it is a system default. Be sure to select the second birthday field, which is 'Date of birth' (where 'birth' is all lowercase).
3) Select 'dynamically equal to' from the second dropdown menu.
4) Select 'Today (No Year)' from the third dropdown menu. Click anywhere outside the popup window to close it.
5) Add a second Compare Contact Fields criteria. Double-click to open the popup window and select the 'Is deleted' field. Leave the second field as 'exactly', and enter a 0 in the last field. Click anywhere outside the popup window to close it.
6) Save to calculate your contact total.
Building the campaign for use with the birthday email/segment
NOTE: Since this is a dynamically built segment that will evaluate any changes every ~15 minutes, you'll need to use a Multi-Step Campaign, so that your birthday email will be delivered every day to those meeting the date of birth criteria you've set up. Your campaign should consist of the birthday segment and whatever birthday email has been created by your department.
1) Go to the Campaigns homepage and choose Multi-Step Campaign, and then choose a Blank campaign. Name your campaign and save it in your CSU/department's folder.
2) From the options on the left-hand side of your screen, double-click or drag/drop a Segment Members step and an Email step into the canvas grid.
3) Double-click on the segment step, and choose the birthday segment you created (using the 'Created By Me' link on the left sidebar will display your most recently created segments). When the segment's options window opens, choose 'Add members regularly until campaign is deactivated' (toward the bottom of the window). This will let the campaign refresh itself without you having to do anything else. Leave the Re-evaluation Frequency field as is. Click anywhere outside the window to close it.
4) Double-click on the email and choose the email created by your department. Click anywhere outside the window to close it.
5) Click and drag to connect the segment to the email, then Save your campaign.
6) Click Verify at the top right to check for errors. If you have none, click Activate.
When the scheduling window pops up, either choose to activate the campaign immediately (meaning people with a birthday matching the current month/day will receive an email within the next 15-30 minutes, provided they have not unsubscribed from your content) or set a date/time for your campaign to go live.
NOTE: We highly recommend scheduling campaigns for a future date/time - even if it's only thirty minutes out - to ensure that any errors are caught and corrected before emails are sent.
