Happy 50^th Birthday President Obama! Marilyn Monroe made presidential birthdays famous when she sang “Happy Birthday Mr. President” to president Kennedy. As a marketer, birthdays provide a great reason to initiate marketing promotions.

To help you celebrate birthdays better, here’s a list of 50 celebration-packed marketing tactics in honor of the President. Bear in mind that some of these events can be paid for by your customers.

Company birthday

1. Mail customers a coupon. Make it look like a birthday card so it gets opened.
2. Email customers a coupon. It’s a reason to communicate with your house file.
3. Text customers a coupon. Text messages break through and it’s a good reason to communicate with your housefile.
4. Mail housefile customers a catalog. I know that this sounds like old media at its most traditional.
5. Share the news. Take out an ad in old-fashioned print media. (Of course, you shouldn’t forget to get your shop dressed for the occasion.^[1])
6. Send customers a gift card. The goal is to entice them to shop in your retail stores.
7. Make customers an offer on a social media network. Think Facebook and Google+.
8. Tweet customers a special offer. Make sure the incentive is good enough to get prospects and customers to follow you on Twitter.
9. Make a special location-based services offer. Use Foursquare or other location-based services platform to get customers involved.
10. Create a fun press release. Incorporate a special offer to entice new customers.
11. Have a storewide sale. This option’s a classic. It’s useful to move your company’s celebration to an otherwise quiet period.
12. Give customers a gift. Hand out a company promotional gift. Make sure that it’s something customers will keep around and coordinates with your offering.
13. Offer customers a virtual gift. This works well for B2B offerings. Give away an e-book or research.
14. Have a contest. Get people excited about your firm’s birthday. Make it easy for lots of people to participate. For example, use photographs of customers.
15. Serve them breakfast. Open early for a special party. Get customers powered for the day with caffeine and muffins. Limit your invitations to make customers feel special.
16. Let them have cake. Invite customers to your store or business for birthday cake. Knitty City, a NYC knitting store, does this every January.
17. Drink to your customers. Have post-hours party with grownup drinks.
18. Have a special raffle. Bear in mind that it’s better to have a lot of small winners than a major one so more people can win.
19. Host a special event. Depending on your business, create an event that gets prospects and customers to your establishment. This requires some creativity. For example, an animal hospital might have an event around dog care.
20. Throw a virtual event. Take Google+ for a test drive to engage with your customers.
21. Use QR codes and host a scavenger hunt in your store. Get customers involved by getting them to work around your store using information connected with the QR codes.^[2]
22. Create a full day event around your product. This is useful to keep people coming into your store all day. For example, a cookware company could offer a series of mini-cooking lessons.

Customer’s birthday

This can be tricky since your buyers, especially if they’re female, may not want to share this information. Therefore, stick to month or month and day. Also, make sure that you have the database capabilities to back it up.