You can store your contact’s birthdays in the date_of_birth field (shown as Birthday in the UI), with the option to collect only the day and month, or to include the year.
Supported date formats
Supported date formats
DD.MM
MM-DD
DD.MM.YYYY
YYYY-MM-DD
We also support all ISO-approved date formats.
e.g. If your contact’s birthday is 18th October 1993, you can send the information in the following format.
18.10
10-18
18.10.1993
1993-10-18
Note: If the year is not included, we will mark the year as 1800 by default for system formatting purposes.
Methods
CSV import
Easily bulk import your contacts birthdays using excel files.
Go to Audiences → Contacts import → Create import → Create import
Give your import a name and select Next
Download the excel template
4. Fill out the excel sheet with the contacts’ phone numbers with country codes or email IDs along with the date of birth
5. Drag and drop or click to add the filed out file. Select Next
6. Assign opt-ins, add to contact list or add tags (if required). Select Next
7. Select Process import 🚀 to finish the import
With a Journeys’ flow
It’s a good idea to start collecting new subscribers birthdays via flows when they’re opting in (or at other key times) and save it to the contact’s properties in charles:
Watch
In our March Product Release webinar, Grace showed us how to start collecting birthdays via flows.
Create a flow and add a Send message node
Click the node to Edit
Go to ⚙️ → Customer response settings ****and toggle ON Store customer response
Select Store in charles contact property and make sure the Birthday ****custom property ****is selected:
Now the customer’s response will be store as a 🎨Custom properties
Note: The first response from your customer is stored (no matter the value) and the flow will only continue once your customer has responded.
Website forms and webhooks
Use website forms and webhooks on your website and CRMs for seamless data integration.
Forms
Add a birthday field to your website sign-up or address forms to collect your contact’s birthday and on form submission pass the information to your charles universe using our API.
Please make sure to encrypt your charles API key when using it on website forms.
External CRMs
If you’ve collected the information in your CRMs, you can create a workflow to update the contact’s information on charles using our API.
API documentation
API documentation
Update Contacts API:
To update your contact's date_of_birth in Charles Universe, you can uniquely identify and update them using their email or phone number through the "external_reference_id". Here's a guide on how to implement it:
Requirements:
Your Charles Universe Domain:
your_charles_universe_domain: Charles Universe URLe.g., whatsapp.hello-charles.com
Your Charles Universe API Key:
your_charles_api_key: Charles Universe API Keye.g., cbe***-****************
Where to find your Charles API Key:
Navigate to your Charles account > Settings > API Key
External Reference ID:
external_reference_id: Contact’s email ID or phone number with the country code to uniquely identify the contacte.g., admin@hello-charles.com or +491573758412
Contact’s date of birth:
date_of_birth: Contact’s date of birth in a supported date formate.g., 18.10.1993
Source type
source_type: Contact’s source of the update.e.g., website, CRM, etc
Usage:
To identify and update a contact, use the "external_reference_id" parameter in your API calls, providing either the contact's email or phone number with country code. This ensures the contact’s date_of_birth is updated in your charles universe.
Sample Curl:
curl --location --request PUT 'https://{your_charles_universe_domain}/api/v1beta/contact/' \
--header 'accept: application/json' \
--header 'X-API-Key: {your_charles_api_key}' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data '{
"external_reference_id": "{contact's email or phone number with country code}",
"source_type": "{source of the contact update}",
"person_properties": {
"date_of_birth": "18.10"
}
}'