How to automate birthday emails from Gmail, Outlook or your own domain

What you need before you start

• A list of people with birthdays. A spreadsheet, CRM or HR export works. Month and day are enough; add the year only if you want to mention their age.
• An email address for each person. Without it, the birthday is known but the email has nowhere to go.
• A mailbox to send from. Your Gmail or Google Workspace account, Outlook or Microsoft 365, or your own domain through SMTP (for example Zoho Mail or cPanel webmail).
• A short template. One warm paragraph, their first name, and a sign-off from a real person or team.

How to automate birthday emails with Peoplewisher, step by step

1. 01

   Create a free account

   Sign up and answer a few onboarding questions. Peoplewisher sets up your logo, a branded email and your first group.

2. 02

   Import your people

   Upload a CSV, Excel or vCard file. Columns such as name, email and birthday are matched for you. You can also sync a CRM or HR tool like HubSpot, Salesforce or BambooHR so new people are added automatically.

3. 03

   Connect the mailbox you want to send from

   Go to Apps & Integrations → Email → Connect and choose Gmail or Outlook, then sign in and allow sending. For your own domain, choose SMTP and enter the server, port (465 for SSL or 587 for TLS), username, password and send-from address, then click Test & save. If you skip this step, Peoplewisher's own email service sends for you.

4. 04

   Write the birthday email

   Open the group's Group Schedule, switch on Email and click Write with AI, or design one in the email editor. Add placeholders like {firstname} and {business_name}, and set the sender name (for example “Sarah from Acme”) and reply-to address.

5. 05

   Choose a send time and switch it on

   Set Send Message at, for example 8:00 am, and click Save settings. Or type “Send a warm birthday email at 8am” into the AI Assisted Schedule and click Apply.

6. 06

   Check the schedule

   Open Schedule to see upcoming birthday emails, use Preview to see exactly what one person will receive, and check History after the first sends.

Want a different email for every person rather than one template? Peoplewisher AI can write a special personal message for each person before their day, using what you know about them, and you can approve each one first.

Gmail vs Outlook vs SMTP: which sender to use

If birthday emails land in spam, connect your own domain or mailbox instead of a shared sender, and avoid emails that are a single image with no text.

Can you automate birthday emails in Gmail or Outlook for free?

Not natively. Gmail and Outlook can schedule a single email, but neither can read a birthday column and send every year by itself. The do-it-yourself routes are:

• Google Sheets + Apps Script: a daily script reads the sheet and sends with Gmail. Free, but someone has to write and maintain the script, and it breaks when columns change.
• Zapier, Make or n8n: a scheduled workflow looks up today's birthdays and sends an email. Flexible, but you build every step and pay for the runs.
• Outlook scheduled send: fine for one colleague, but you must write and schedule every email by hand each year.
• A birthday tool: Peoplewisher is free for up to 50 people by email, with nothing to code. See pricing.

Birthday email templates you can copy

Need more wording? Browse 40 birthday messages for employees grouped by tone, or ready-made HTML designs in the template library.

Birthday email best practices

1. 1 Send early in the day, around 8 or 9am, so yours is one of the first wishes they see.
2. 2 Lead with the wish. If you include an offer, put it after the greeting and keep it simple.
3. 3 Use a real sender name, such as a founder, account manager or the People team.
4. 4 Write for a missing detail. If a first name is blank, “Hi {firstname},” becomes “Hi ,”. Fill gaps first or use wording that still reads well.
5. 5 Include an unsubscribe link for customer emails with the {unsubscribe_url} placeholder, and honour opt-outs.