CRM Hack #2: Automate sending of birthday greetings to your customers.

CRM Hack #2: Automate sending of birthday greetings to your customers.




 

Hello everyone!

What sets you apart as a sales person is your ability to add that personal touch to your business relationship with your customers. Sending a gift on a special day, or leaving a note wishing them on their birthdays, are small, yet significant actions that show your customers that you care. And these are actions done without any expectations :) You must be engaging with a lot of customers and it is highly unlikely that they all are your friends on Facebook or some social channel, right? How about keeping a tab on their birthdays from your business tool, Zoho CRM? And how about automating greetings just in case you are too pressed for time to leave a personal note? Besides, this reduces the possibility of your missing out wishing some of your clients. Cool, right? Let me just show you a simple hack that lets you automate birthday greetings to your customers!

Here are the steps:



1. Create a birthday wish template:
Go to Settings->Setup->Customization->Templates->Create a template for Leads/Contacts. You have three options to create birthday templates.


(a)
Pre-defined templates:  Find a few pre-defined birthday templates from Create a template -      >C elebration.

(b)
Customized templates: Find a few basic models from Create a new template -> Basic   


(c)Customized templates using HTML: Go to 'Insert HTML' option on the top right corner 
in the template gallery. Add or edit your code.    

 

2. Create a workflow to automate sending the birthday greetings.

 

a) Go to Settings->Setup->Workflow rules->Create a rule for Contacts.

b) Define the time and date on which the workflow must be triggered, and pick  the Date of Birth field.

c)Choose the date of execution as  Date of Birth field

d)Set the Execution cycle as Every year.

e) Set the "Which records" to “All records” (Or define specific groups and choose to send birthday wishes to that specific clientele (https://www.zoho.com/crm/help/automation/workflow-rules.html - Locate Set rule criteria)

 

3. Define an action to trigger emails to customers on their birthdays.


Go to Instant action->Send alerts->Choose the  birthday template just created->Email recipient is “Contact/Lead: email and save the workflow. This automation rule sends greetings to your contacts every year on their birthday. 



 

 

4. Personalize emails to important clients by creating a custom view showing upcoming birthdays. This is done using formula fields. Let me walk you through the steps:

 

 

1. Go to Setup->Modules->ContactsDrag and drop a Formula field and paste this in the expression and name it as “Month of Birth” and save the formula.

Month(${Contacts.Date of Birth})

This formula  extracts the month of the date of birth and updates it in this formula field.


Then, drag and drop another formula and paste the below expression and name it as “Day of birth” and save the formula and the layout.

Dayofmonth(${Contacts.Date of Birth})

This formula  extracts the day of the date and updates it in this formula field.





Similarly, consider the above image as reference and create another formula using Dayofmonth(${Contacts.Date of Birth})


 

2. Go to Contacts module—>List view drop down at the top left—>Create view.


3.  Give the criteria as “If “Month of Birth” is 1 and name this view as January and add Day of Month and Month of birth columns in the view. 


4.
Sort the day of month in the ascending order.




Now, all the birthdays that fall in January is listed in this view. Create 11 other views for each month. If you feel the custom views are flooding the drop down, just edit this custom view othe 1st of every month and change the month of birth criteria alone. If you have any queries on this, do leave a comment below. Will be happy to help you with it!

 


      Zoho Campaigns Resources


        • Desk Community Learning Series


        • Digest


        • Functions


        • Meetups


        • Kbase


        • Resources


        • Glossary


        • Desk Marketplace


        • MVP Corner


        • Word of the Day


        • Ask the Experts


          • Sticky Posts

          • How to reach the official Zoho Support channels and avoid fake ones.

            Dear Customers, Thanks a lot for choosing Zoho! Our applications are built to help achieve your day-to-day business goals. We are committed to engaging with you, to understand and develop solutions that enhance your productivity.  We are happy and ready to help you use our services effectively. Understanding and avoiding fake support Just like using popular bank names and financial applications for phishing purposes, using Zoho and claiming to be providing Zoho Support or services with false numbers
          • Function #35: Close all tasks associated with a lead and create a new task.

            Welcome back everyone! Last week, we learnt how to close all tasks of a deal depending upon the deal stage. This week, let's look at a custom function that lets you close all of the tasks associated with a lead while simultaneously creating a new task, like when you need to halt all progress towards a lead while the lead is not available at the moment but create a reminder task. Business scenario: The success of a company, in one way or another, is determined by the leads it gets. Each lead is just
          • Zoho CRM Webinar - Redesigning Daily User Experiences with Canvas

            <br> Your users across roles use the CRM for day-to-day tasks that are necessary. Whether they perform their tasks on time, the right way, or at all depends on a lot of factors, including User Experience. Many businesses struggle with rigid layouts,
          • Join us at the Canada ZUG Meetup: What’s New in Zoho CRM

            Hello Zoho Community! Start your year with fresh insights into Zoho CRM’s latest updates and tools. Whether you're a CRM beginner or a experienced user, this meetup is crafted to help you optimise your processes and leverage new features. Explore practical
          • CRM Hack #2: Automate sending of birthday greetings to your customers.

              Hello everyone! What sets you apart as a sales person is your ability to add that personal touch to your business relationship with your customers. Sending a gift on a special day, or leaving a note wishing them on their birthdays, are small, yet significant actions that show your customers that you care. And these are actions done without any expectations :) You must be engaging with a lot of customers and it is highly unlikely that they all are your friends on Facebook or some social channel,

          Zoho CRM Plus Resources

            Zoho Books Resources


              Zoho Subscriptions Resources

                Zoho Projects Resources


                  Zoho Sprints Resources


                    Zoho Orchestly Resources


                      Zoho Creator Resources


                        Zoho WorkDrive Resources



                          Zoho CRM Resources

                          • CRM Community Learning Series

                            CRM Community Learning Series


                          • Tips

                            Tips

                          • Functions

                            Functions

                          • Meetups

                            Meetups

                          • Kbase

                            Kbase

                          • Resources

                            Resources

                          • Digest

                            Digest

                          • CRM Marketplace

                            CRM Marketplace

                          • MVP Corner

                            MVP Corner




                            Zoho Writer Writer

                            Get Started. Write Away!

                            Writer is a powerful online word processor, designed for collaborative work.

                              Zoho CRM コンテンツ






                                ご検討中の方

                                  • Recent Topics

                                  • Uploading data to S3

                                    Has anyone successfully uploaded data from Creator to S3 using the InvokeURL command or any other method in Deluge? (keywords: S3, AWS, Amazon, bucket)
                                  • UPS Label size when generated via Zoho

                                    We've integrated UPS with Zoho inventory. When creating and downloading the shipping labels they are created in a larger paper size. I'd like them to be generated to print on a 4x6 printer. Zoho have told me I need to do this within our UPS portal. UPS
                                  • Credit Management: #4 Credits on Unused Period

                                    Recall a familiar situation. You sign up for a monthly gym membership. You pay the subscription fee upfront, get motivated, and show up consistently for the first week. Then, suddenly, you get caught up in work deadlines, travel plans, or a dip in motivation.
                                  • Zoho Analytics Automatically Deletes Queries and Reports When a Synced CRM Field Is Removed

                                    We’ve encountered a serious and recurring issue that poses a massive data integrity risk for any Zoho Analytics customer using Zoho CRM integration. When a field is deleted in Zoho CRM — even an unused one — Zoho Analytics automatically deletes every
                                  • Prevent new Record Association

                                    Hello all, We have a small sales organization therefore, it's helpful for everyone on the sales team to be able to view the full list of accounts to assist in preventing duplicate accounts from being created. However we want to prevent people from creating
                                  • Tip of the Week #73– Automate workflow with Make integration.

                                    Make is a no-code workflow automation platform designed to connect your favorite apps and automate repetitive tasks across services. By integrating Make with Zoho TeamInbox, you can streamline everyday inbox management and save valuable time. With this
                                  • Viewing attachments

                                    I'm using a Web Form integrated in my web site to collect Leads several info, including a image upload. In order to to approve each lead, we have to view the image uploaded. Unfortunately, in the Leads view, the Attachments can only be downloaded, not
                                  • Kaizen #89 - Color Coding using Client Script

                                    Hello everyone! Welcome back to another exciting Kaizen post. Today let us see how you can apply color codes to the List and Detail Pages of Zoho CRM using Client Script. Need for color code in Zoho CRM When you mark things with different colors as a
                                  • Instant Sync of Zoho CRM Data?

                                    With how valuable Zoho Analytics is to actually creating data driven dashboards/reports, we are surprised that there is no instant or near instant sync between Zoho CRM and Zoho Analytics. Waiting 3 hours is okay for most of our reports, but there are
                                  • Is it possibly to directly set the tax amount on order instead of indirectly via tax rates?

                                    We own an eCommerce application and want to funnel submitted orders from that system into Zoho. We're already calculating tax in our application and just need a way to set it in Zoho. We tried to use Zoho's tax objects for tax by setting the rates to
                                  • Zoho account sign in with passkey

                                    Hello, I am trying to sign in using passkey, but the option doesn't show up in the web and is disabled in Oneauth on mobile, saying the admin has restricted the use. On the Admin page in Security MFA I can find no option for passkey. Help would be greatly
                                  • Rescheduled US meetups: Zoho Desk user meetups are coming to seven U.S. cities in October and November, 2025

                                    Hello to our Zoho Desk users in the United States, We're excited to share the revised dates for the upcoming Zoho User Groups happening across the US this summer. Our product experts are heading to seven cities throughout the country, and for the first
                                  • Checklists as templates

                                    Is it possible to save checklists as templates to reuse them in other tasks? Example: I have a web project. I maintain individual web URLs as tasks. Within the tasks the same checklist should be used again and again: - Page created in CMS - Properties
                                  • Send mass email using my secondary email

                                    Hello, When I send an email to just one person from Zoho CRM, a complete email editor appears, where I can choose which of my email addresses I want to use in the From field. When I send a mass email, there is not such option. I can only select the email
                                  • Add the same FROM email to multiple department

                                    Hi, We have several agents who work with multiple departments and we'd like to be able to select their names on the FROM field (sender), but apparently it's not possible to add a FROM address to multiple departments. Is there any way around this? Thanks.
                                  • ZOHO TEAM INBOX Calendar Integration

                                    The Problem: Clients send meeting invitations to our TeamInbox address. TeamInbox receives these invites, but we cannot accept them. We do not use individual inboxes for transparency purposes. Ideal Solution: A way to accept calendar invites sent to our
                                  • Unearned / Deferred Revenue Automatic Calculation for Subscriptions

                                    As a SaaS business, we have multiple active subscriptions with varying dates and amounts. Is there a way to have a monthly automatic calculation for all of them that debits or credits the unearned revenue and revenue accounts accordingly? Alternatively,
                                  • Zoho Desk Limit for Comma Separated Queries

                                    Hi, I have just discovered a limit that I believed is not mentioned in any of Zoho's documentations. My search query looks like so: "query: {"accountId":"786050000091629966,786050000163589273,786050000163589427,786050000162753705,786050000162112971,786050000161987643,786050000160752868,786050000167089504,786050000167089378,786050000167089024,786050000167070005,786050000166295256,786050000128153693,786050000110560021,786050000046594575,786050000039106461,786050000002225356,786050000076889093,786050000047895103,786050000043365354,786050000044765191,786050000041790249,786050000040359116,786050000037945198,786050000024605077,786050000000525015,786050000155333895,786050000157741437,786050000000718125,786050000011574353,","departmentId":"786050000042648070","status":"Finished","sortBy":"createdTime","customField2":"cf_completion_date:2025-01-28T03:00:00.000Z,2025-10-28T03:00:00.000Z","customField3":"cf_billed:false"}"
                                  • Module Name doesn't exist

                                    I am trying to create a module named Activity, with plural Activities, but I have an error that module name already exists. This module is doesn't exist, and I don't have a single field called Activity or Activities.
                                  • Zoho Desk iOS and Android app update: AI powered: Reply Assistance and Refine Messages on IM module.

                                    Hello everyone! We are excited to introduce new AI powered features on the IM module of the Zoho Desk app. Reply Assistance: Reply Assistance generates suggested responses for incoming chat messages, which you can directly insert into the conversation
                                  • Unify All Zoho Video Meeting Experiences into One Standardized Platform

                                    Hi Zoho Team, We would like to share an important user experience concern regarding the current state of video meeting functionality across the Zoho ecosystem. The Problem Within Zoho, there are multiple ways to initiate or schedule a video meeting: Zoho
                                  • Is it possible to embed Youtube shorts?

                                    Hi Zoho desk support, This is Ryan from Accuver America. While I'm trying to create a knowledge base article with embed video, I ran into this issue. "www.youtube.com refuse to connect" A little bit background is that because this video is recorded on
                                  • Zoho Inventory - Move Orders

                                    Quick question about Move Orders... Why is there no status to say something like "Draft", "In Progress" and "Completed", similar to Transfer Orders? I'm assuming that when something needs to be moved it should be planned in Inventory, executed and then
                                  • Split functionality - Admins need ability to do this

                                    Admins should be able to split an expense at any point of the process prior to approval. The split is very helpful for our account coding, but to have to go back to a user and ask them to split an invoice that they simply want paid is a bit of an in
                                  • Delegates - Access to approved reports

                                    We realized that delegates do not have access to reports after they are approved. Many users ask questions of their delegates about past expense reports and the delegates can't see this information. Please allow delegates see all expense report activity,
                                  • How to include total km for multiple trips in expense report.

                                    Whenever I create a mileage report it only shows the total dollar amount to be reimbursed. The mileage for each individual trip is included but I also need to see the total distance for all trips in a report? How do I do this?
                                  • Get logged in user ID in Deluge script

                                    Hello all, How do I get the id of the logged-in user in a deluge script? the "zoho.loginuserid" function actually returns the users email address or whatever the user id they use to login to zoho with and not the id of the user record, and given that
                                  • Item Details Field - New Barcode / Document option?

                                    Is this a new feature??? its in both books and inventory.
                                  • Super Admin Logging in as another User

                                    How can a Super Admin login as another user. For example, I have a sales rep that is having issues with their Accounts and I want to view their Zoho Account with out having to do a GTM and sharing screens. Moderation Update (8th Aug 2025): We are working
                                  • Shared Mailbox - Mark as read for all users

                                    Hi all, Maybe someone can help me out. At the moment we have a shared mailbox without streams. When a users reads an mail or marks it as read other users will not see this. How can we resolve this? We now archive the mails when read and followed up. However
                                  • How do I increase the email attachment size in Zoho CRM ?

                                    It looks like I'm limited to 10MB when sending an attachment using the email widget on a record in Zoho CRM. Is there a way to increase the size? Or can I use some other tool? From what I'm reading online, I'm maxed out at 10MB. Any insight would be greatly
                                  • Can I export to PDF in Zoho Learn

                                    I have seen help pages where export to pdf options are available but I do not see that option available from the application. I see that exprt is available in my free trial version but that is only to html pages. I need to be able to export my manuals
                                  • Zoho Sites "pages" management page

                                    I have 80 plus pages on zoho sites. When I go to the "pages" link to view and edit pages, They are not in any kind of order, so I spend lots of time searching for pages when I need to edit or create new. How can I change the view order of all my pages
                                  • Staff rules

                                    Hi! Do you people know what are the default staff rules when a new booking is created? We have two staff members in my team (me as the admin, and my employee). As we share the same services, I'm wondering how Zoho will pick the staff for new apointments.
                                  • Add Image Upload Field to Zoho Bookings Registration Form

                                    Hi, We would like to request the addition of an image upload field to the Zoho Bookings registration form. Currently, Zoho Bookings only supports text-based fields (e.g., Single Line, Multi-Line, Email, Checkbox, Dropdown, Radio Button, and Date), but
                                  • New Field in CRM Product Module Not Visible in Zoho Creator for Mapping

                                    I created a new single-line field in the Products module in Zoho CRM. Zoho CRM and Zoho Creator are integrated, but the newly created field in CRM is not visible in Zoho Creator when I try to map fields.
                                  • Merge Tags Output Incorrect Placeholder Text After CRM Sync

                                    Hi everyone, I’m experiencing an issue with merge tags in Zoho Campaigns after last sync of contacts and leads from Zoho CRM (days before everything worked perfectly). Here’s the situation (seems like a default configuration in Campaigns) : My leads have
                                  • UI Improvement - Ability to Collapse Flow

                                    The UI for Flow is generally pretty good. However, when multiple decision trees are used, the layout can get pretty convoluted and hard-to-follow (see one of my Flows below): In these cases, even the auto-arrange fails to make this something that a normal
                                  • Windows agent 2025_M02 release notes

                                    Agent Version: 111.0.3.300 Release date: 24 February, 2025 Various Major enhancements to improve overall performance and optimize the user experience. Squashed a few bugs to improve overall product quality.
                                  • Windows agent 2025_M01 release notes

                                    Agent Version: 111.0.3.299 Release date: 05 February, 2025 Major Enhancement: Live Monitor feature compatibility released. Major Enhancement: Updated Scaling for multi technician cases with Android and Web based viewers. Various other bug fixes and performance
                                  • Next Page