Birthday points are awarded to customers once a year to celebrate their birthday. To earn birthday points, a customer must enter the month and day of their birthday in the Smile panel. Before awarding birthday points, Smile uses built-in security measures to prevent misuse of the reward.
Smile collects only the birth month and day, which are required to issue points. For privacy reasons, the birth year is not collected.
ℹ️ Note: Before customers can enter their birthday, the Birthday reward must first be enabled as a way to earn in your program settings. To set up or edit birthday points as a way to earn, follow the steps in our guide on configuring ways to earn points.
How customers input their birthday
For individual customers
Once the Birthday reward is enabled, customers can find the Birthday option under “Ways to earn” in the Smile panel. From there, they can enter and save their birthday directly in the panel.
✅ Tip: To learn more about entering a birthday from a customer’s perspective you can check out our customer guide: How do I earn birthday points?
For multiple customers
If you need to add birthdays for many customers at once, you can import customer birthdays using a CSV file.
When birthday points are awarded
Birthday points are issued daily at approximately 12 AM ET on the day of the customer’s birthday. Regardless of your account’s timezone, birthday points are always issued according to this schedule.
ℹ️ Note: To use their birthday points, customers must redeem their points to receive a discount code. The birthday reward itself only grants points — not a code automatically.
Security measures
To prevent fraud, points are never issued immediately when a customer enters their birthday into the Smile panel.
Points are only awarded if a customer saves their birthday at least 30 days prior to the entered date. If a customer enters a date within the next 30 days they will not earn points this year, but will earn birthday points as usual the following and subsequent years.
Birthday points can only be awarded once within a 365-day period. If a customer changes their birthday in the Smile panel after having already received birthday points in the last 365 days, no additional points will be awarded.
Scenario | Birthday points awarding behavior |
On Jan 1, 2025 customer enters their birthday as March 1. | Points are awarded on March 1, 2025. |
On Feb 22, 2025 customer enters their birthday as March 1. | Points are not awarded on March 1, 2025 but will be awarded on March 1, 2026. |
On Jan 1, 2025 customer enters their birthday as March 1. On March 2, 2025 customer updates their birthday to June 14. | Points are awarded on March 1, 2025. Points are not awarded again on June 14, 2025, but will be awarded on June 14, 2026. |
✅ Tip: If you would like to review why a particular customer’s birthday points were not awarded, you can use our guide on troubleshooting birthday points.