Is it just me or are birthdays generally known as a time for receiving gifts? I always thought that was the tradition. On my recent birthday my wife, family and friends all were nice enough to buy me tokens of their affection to mark the passing of another year.

So maybe I was caught up in the moment and being greedy when I received an email message from Dairy Queen with this subject line, “Happy Birthday, enjoy a Blizzard on us.” Now I am an unabashed fan of soft serve ice cream. I like it better than the real stuff and have since I was a kid many many birthdays ago. So I opened the email and found this:

At which point I’m pretty happy. Then I read this:

Really? A buy one get one free offer? After twice mentioning a free Blizzard for me this is the best they can do?

Equally frustrating are my friends at Coke, another brand that I am a rabid fan of. I don’t like Pepsi, I’ll drink Mountain Dew if I have to but I’d rather have a Coke. Now because of how many Coke products I consume, I started entering the stupid codes they have at the My Coke Rewards Web site. Frankly, the entire program is stupid. The point values to buy anything are so high I can’t get near them and the chances of winning their sweepstakes seem astronomical. Regardless, I have faithfully pressed on entering the codes from my sodas and periodically attempting to win something.

So when I received an email that says, “A Special Birthday Greeting for a Special Member of My Coke Rewards,” I thought maybe, just maybe, Coke would come through where Diary Queen failed. No such luck. Here’s the text of their note:

Happy Birthday Mike!

We hope that your birthday is filled with little (and big) things that are sure to make you smile. Make your sparkling day shine a little bit brighter; head over to My Coke Rewards and spend some points on exclusive rewards to mark your special occasion.

Being fair, their email didn’t promise me anything for free like Dairy Queen did. On the other hand, it costs them NOTHING to give me some extra points as a birthday gift. NOTHING! To give you some perspective, a single free blockbuster rental costs 90 rewards points in this program. ONE FREE RENTAL!

I know email marketing is still a relatively new discipline, at least compared to drawing on cave walls, but how hard is this? Bite the bullet and give your best, most active customers something on their birthday. It will pay off for you I swear. For example, AMC Theaters has the right idea:

Here’s what their email said:

Happy Birthday, Michael

At AMC^® we know today’s your special day. We even marked it on our calendar. So to help you celebrate, we want you to enjoy a large soda on us, just for being a MovieWatcher^®. Use the coupon below today, tomorrow or even the next day, but don’t wait too long. After 30 days, the candles go out on this birthday celebration. Happy birthday from your friends at AMC.

So fuck it, I’m going to see Predators!

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3. The Bush billboard and Happy Presidents Day, from a place that doesn’t celebrate the holiday #SES #OMS