Happy Birthday to me!  I don’t see enough sites taking advantage of stored birthdates to send customized messages on a birthday, but I got a few today.  I got several emails from vBulletin forums I’m registered on, all the same format:

Subject: Happy Birthday from [forum name]

Hello [username],
We at [forum name] forums would like to wish you a happy birthday today!

The first one was great, but after the 3rd I wasn’t that impressed.  Can’t these be customized a bit more?

Another message I got was from Facebook.  Of course I heard from about 75% of my Facebook friends, with birthday wishes on my Wall etc.  But Facebook itself took the time to wish me a Happy Birthday from the top of the home page.

Finally, one other noteable: Adidas sends a nice email with a 15% off coupon code every year, and they send it a week before your birthday, beating everyone else to the punch.

If you are capturing your members or customers birthdates, are you using that data to send them a special something?  If not, should you be?