Occasion Date

Overview

Occasion Date enables you to activate on meaningful dates associated with a profile—such as birthdays, anniversaries, renewal dates, membership expiries, or other custom milestones.

These dates can represent recurring events (e.g., a birthday every year) or one‑time milestones (e.g., a subscription anniversary). Occasion Date makes it easy to build audiences based on dates without relying on the year, enabling timely and relevant campaigns.

Value Created

Occasion Date simplifies audience building for events that repeat annually or mark important moments. With this feature, you can:

Target profiles based on recurring dates.
Create audiences for upcoming or recent occasions (e.g., “in 7 days”).
Exclude profiles with an upcoming occasion.
Compare occasion dates to fixed or relative dates (e.g., “before/after [selected date]”).

This gives marketers precise control for birthday, renewal, seasonal, and milestone‑based campaigns.

Where Occasion Date Applies

Occasion Date can be used on any DateTime field in the Person Data schema that represents a meaningful event, such as:

birthday
anniversary
contractStartDate
membershipStartDate
membershipExpiryDate (e.g., an annual pass nearing renewal)
renewalDate
Any custom DateTime field representing a repeating or milestone‑based occasion

🔍 Note: No special field type is required — any DateTime value is supported.

Filtering Options

Occasion Date is available under the Have condition in Audience Builder.

You can build audiences that:

Have a birthday in X days
Have an occasion date after the selected date
Have an occasion date before the selected date
Have an occasion date equal to today + X days

These comparisons treat dates as recurring annual events, ignoring the stored year.

How Recurring Logic Works

Occasion Date compares day + month, not the year. This means:

“Birthday today” matches profiles whose date equals today’s day/month.
“Birthday in 7 days” finds the next occurrence, even across year boundaries.
February 29 is handled safely for non‑leap years.

Use Cases

Birthday Campaigns

Profiles with birthday today
Profiles with birthday in X days
Profiles with birthdays outside a selected period (for exclusions)

Anniversaries & Milestones

Membership anniversary in the next week
Subscription or contract milestone approaching

Renewals

Membership or pass expiring soon
Renewal date recently passed (follow‑up or win‑back)

Seasonal / Avoidance Logic

Profiles with birthdays in a specific month
Profiles whose birthday is not in the current period

Engagement / Retention

Birthday or milestone occurred recently
Anniversary just passed

Working With Future Events (Non‑Recurring Dates)

Occasion Date covers recurring or milestone‑based dates only.

For audiences based on actual future dates that include the year—such as upcoming deliveries, appointments, contract end dates, or scheduled events—you can use the standard DateTime filters under Have. These allow you to target profiles whose DateTime field:

Occurs in the next X days
Falls later today (Today from now)
Falls within the remainder of the year (Current year from now)
Occurs within a defined time window (Between)

These comparisons use the full date, including year, and are ideal for events or expirations that do not recur annually.

👀 Use case: DateTime Formatting

If you need a detailed overview of supported date and date‑time formats, including examples, custom format patterns, and 12‑hour/24‑hour guidelines, see the DateTime conversion article in Data Management.