Occasion Date

Overview

Occasion Date enables you to activate on dates associated with a profile—such as birthdays, anniversaries, renewals, or other milestones—by treating these values as recurring annual events.

Whether an event repeats every year (e.g., a birthday) or marks a memorable moment (e.g., a subscription anniversary), Occasion Date provides an easy way to build audiences based on month/day logic rather than full calendar dates.

Value Created

Occasion Date simplifies audience building for time‑based campaigns by applying recurring logic automatically. 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]”).
Build predictable, precise segments for birthdays, renewals, milestones, and seasonal campaigns.

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

Where Occasion Date Applies

Occasion Date can be applied to any DateTime field in the Person Data schema.
The feature simply changes how the date is evaluated — treating the value as a recurring annual event (day + month) instead of a full calendar date (day + month + year).

Common examples include:

birthday
anniversary
contractStartDate
membershipStartDate
membershipExpiryDate (e.g., an annual pass nearing renewal)
renewalDate
Any custom DateTime field where recurring evaluation is useful

🔍 Note: Any DateTime value is supported — Occasion Date only affects the comparison logic.

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.
Leap day (February 29) is handled safely for non‑leap years.

Filtering Options

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

You can build audiences that:

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

All comparisons treat the date as a recurring event.

Use Cases

Occasion Date is useful when a date should be treated as a recurring annual event rather than a one‑time timestamp. Typical scenarios include:

Birthday Campaigns

birthday today
birthday in X days
birthday outside a period (for exclusions)

Anniversaries & Milestones

membership anniversary approaching
subscription/contract milestone in the next week

Renewals

membership or pass expiring soon
renewal date recently passed (win‑back / follow‑up)

Seasonal / Avoidance Logic

birthdays in a specific month
exclude birthdays during a peak campaign period

Engagement / Retention

Birthday or milestone occurred recently
Anniversary just passed

Working With Future Events (Non‑Recurring Dates)

Occasion Date applies only to recurring or milestone‑based logic.

If you need to work with actual future timestamps that include the year — such as:

deliveries
appointments
contract end dates
scheduled events
upcoming expiration dates

— use the standard DateTime filters under Have, such as:

occurs in the next X days
occurs later today (Today from now)
falls within the remainder of the year (Current year from now)
occurs between two dates

These comparisons use the full date, including the year, and are ideal for one‑time events, expirations, and scheduled actions.

👀 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.