Automate birthday discount emails for e-commerce using Google Sheets and Gmail

⚙ How It Works & Setup Steps: Automated Birthday Discount

How It Works

This workflow is a powerful yet simple automation to delight your customers on their birthdays. It runs every day on a schedule you define and automatically pulls data from your customer list on Google Sheets. The workflow then checks to see if any customer has a birthday on the current day. If a match is found, it generates a unique discount code and sends a personalized, celebratory email with the code directly to the customer. This ensures no birthday is ever missed, fostering customer loyalty and driving sales with zero manual effort.

Setup Steps

Follow these steps to get the workflow running in your n8n instance and start sending automated birthday discounts.

1. Prerequisites

You will need a working n8n instance and a few key accounts:

• Google Sheets: To store your customer data, including their email address and birthday. The birthday column should be formatted as MM-dd (e.g., 08-27).
• Gmail: To send the personalized birthday emails to your customers.

2. Workflow Import

Import the provided workflow JSON into your n8n canvas. All the necessary nodes will appear on your canvas, ready for configuration.

3. Configure Credentials

Connect the following credentials to their respective nodes:

• Google Sheets: Connect your Google account to the Get Customer Data node.
• Gmail: Connect your Gmail account to the Send Birthday Email node.

4. Customize the Workflow

1. Get Customer Data:
   • Enter the Spreadsheet ID and Sheet Name of your Google Sheet containing the customer data.
2. Is It Their Birthday?:
   • This node compares the customer's birthday column with the current date. Ensure {{ $json.birthday }} matches the exact name of your birthday column in Google Sheets.
3. Generate Discount Code:
   • This node is pre-configured to create a simple unique code. For an e-commerce platform (like Shopify or WooCommerce), you will need to replace this node with the specific API call to generate a valid coupon code in your system.
4. Send Birthday Email:
   • Enter your sender email in the From Email field.
   • Customize the Subject and Message with your own text and branding to make it personal. The {{ $json.name }} and {{ $json.discountCode }} expressions will automatically pull the correct customer name and generated code.

5. Activate the Workflow

Once all configurations are complete, click "Save" and then "Active". The workflow is now live and will automatically run every morning to send out birthday wishes!