Email Countdown Timers: Boost Engagement with Litmus

Tick, tock.

There’s nothing like a ticking clock to build a sense of urgency for your subscribers—and encourage them to act right now. Countdown timers build anticipation and encourage action. Whether you’re promoting your biggest sale of the year or hoping tickets sell out at an upcoming event, a well-placed countdown timer can be a very powerful email marketing tactic. 

In this post, we’ll talk through everything you need to know about setting up a countdown timer in your own email marketing campaigns:

• What is an email countdown timer?
• The power of email countdown timers
• Types of email countdown timers
• How to create and email countdown timer with Litmus Personalize
• Examples of countdown timers in the wild
• Best practices for using countdown timers
• How to increase conversions with Litmus Personalize

What is an email countdown timer?

An email countdown timer displays a clock that runs from a designated time down to zero as a form of real-time personalization. When we asked email marketers about their personalization strategy, countdown timers were the top tactic used (9%), followed by personalized images (6%), and progress bars (4%). 

The power of countdown timers in email marketing

Why should you use countdown timers in email? 

Countdown timers make your email feel urgent

Email marketing is often a long game. Your subscribers know they’ll probably get another email…and another. So how can you make them purchase right now? A countdown timer can trigger a sense of urgency, a feeling of “I should act fast!” This mental nudge can get your subscriber to move more quickly through the funnel, increasing your conversions.

Countdown timers give an automatic sense of FOMO

By definition, countdown timers refer to a limited time offer. This can induce a sense of FOMO for your subscribers, which makes them want whatever you’re promoting more. When something is rare, exclusive, or hard to get, it becomes more desirable, and we have a tendency of wanting what we can’t easily have. That’s the scarcity factor at play.

Urgency + scarcity = More conversions

Countdown timers bring together both urgency and scarcity. That’s why they’re impactful—they grab your attention and make you act fast. They’re great for increasing engagement with your emails, encouraging your subscribers to click and convert. Increasing your click-through rates (CTRs)—and hopefully once they hit your landing page, conversions—makes countdown timers one of the most powerful dynamic techniques in your email marketer’s toolbox.

That’s we why we added the feature in Litmus Personalize. Now it’s much easier to implement and scale your countdowns across various campaigns.

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Types of countdown timers

So—how should you approach countdown timers in email? There are two approaches you can take: animated GIFs or dynamic content. Let’s dive into the pros and cons of each.

Dynamic content vs. animated GIFs

The format of an email countdown timer is always the same—days, hours, minutes, and seconds. But there are plenty of practical use cases for email countdown timers, like:

• Event countdowns, e.g. “48 hours, 5 minutes, and 27 seconds until the conference”
• Launch countdowns, e.g. “3 days and 4 hours until our new song launches”
• Subscription renewal countdowns, e.g. “3 days until your subscription renews”
• Birthday, wedding, or anniversary countdowns, e.g. “7 days until your big day”
• Expiration countdowns, e.g. “5 days left until your trial expires” or “5 hours left to shop”

Take the online retailer Studio, who uses a bright and bold countdown timer to alert recipients that there were only 100 days until Christmas. They also used their CRM feed to include the recipient’s name in the timer, too—an eye-catching example of personalized imagery.

In Litmus Personalize, you have two different choices for your timer: Day timers and hour timers, depending on how long you want your countdown to run. You can set your timer for any time.

How to design an email with a countdown timer

So—how should you approach countdown timers in email? There are two approaches you can take: static animated GIFs or dynamic content. Let’s dive into the pros and cons of each.

At Litmus, we opt for dynamic content with our countdown timers. Here’s why:

• Less production. With dynamic content, you can be more specific—without the extraneous planning and design work. For example, let’s say you’re promoting a nationwide concert where tickets will be available to purchase at 10am, local time. Instead of scheduling each campaign send time to match up with your animated GIF—or creating one for each different time zone—you can send one email that updates dynamically based on a subscriber’s location.
• Accuracy. A dynamic countdown timer will always be correct because, well, it’s dynamic! The very nature of dynamic content is that it will change based on a set of rules, data, preferences, etc., and for that reason, it will always be up to date.
• Relevancy. What happens after a countdown timer hits zero? With dynamic content, you can have your content flip after it’s done so that you’re not serving up an image with 00:00:00 to subscribers if they open after the event.

Check out this screengrab of a dynamic Litmus Personalize countdown timer in one of our very own emails:

With a tool like Litmus Personalize, you don’t have to think about the pros and cons of static GIFs vs. dynamic content. We take care of all of the technical specs for you, so you can focus on crafting a really cool campaign that speaks to your subscriber. Think: Customizable widgets like timers, progress bars, and sentiment trackers that integrate seamlessly with brand aesthetics. 

Where should you position a countdown timer?

You can position a countdown timer anywhere in an email, though it’s most commonly used at the top. Placing it at the top better optimizes visibility, especially with short subscriber attention spans (the average is less than 9 seconds!)

Whether you place your countdown timer at the top of your email or near the bottom, what matters is that it’s incorporated into the design, rather than an afterthought. In the email from Hunter Boots, a countdown timer is placed at the very top of the email, making it the very first thing seen when the recipient opens. The great use of contrasting colors draws attention to it even more.

What happens when the countdown timer is over?

Just because it’s over, doesn’t mean it’s really over. There’s still opportunity for timers, after they’ve hit zero! 

Many brands will swap the timer with another message after the clock strikes zero. This way, late openers—or folks who reopened—will have the opportunity to engage with your offers.

When this timer from Australian fashion retailer Johnny Bigg expired, they replaced it with win-back messaging reading “You’re too late! See what’s left.”

Carin Slater recommends creating a fallback campaign for this purpose. “After the countdown timer is done, use a different image. For example if the sale ends, you could swap it for a different promotion, or you can use a ‘follow us on social media for more’ for big events like Black Friday or Cyber Monday,” she says. That way, even if someone checks back with your email—or opens it after the promotion has ended—you’re still able to maximize that space with the right message.

Are email countdown timers compatible with all email clients?

Countdown timer support varies by email client, which is why it’s important to always include a fallback option and test ahead of any email campaign. Here is a list of which email clients support a countdown timer and which requires a little more finangling:

*Apple Mail and iOS support animated GIFs, but subscribers with MPP turned on may not have an accurate countdown experience as the image is cached. Litmus Personalize provides a fallback option for this experience.
** Pre Outlook 2016, not supported at all. Outlook 2016 and Outlook 2019 have limited support (will show the animation and play it through a couple of times and then have a play button over it.)

If you’d like to hide the countdown timer on Outlook desktop clients where GIFs aren’t always supported, you can use this code:

And if you want to have a fallback image show up instead of nothing displaying, you can add the fallback content in Microsoft Conditional Code:

Testing and performance for email countdown timers

After you’ve finished your designs, it’s time for testing. 

How to test your countdown timer

Here at Litmus, we’re a little obsessed with pre-send testing, which we always recommend for any new element in your email (especially with email client support changing without warning sometimes.) You can preview your countdown timer directly in Litmus Personalize, so you don’t have to wait for a test send or toggle between multiple tools to know exactly how it appears.

Should I A/B test my countdown timer?

In addition to pre-send testing, countdown timers are a great element to A/B test in your emails. Every audience is different, and every campaign is different, so it’s the best way to find out if it really does add a sense of urgency and increase conversions or fall flat. Make sure you have a specific hypothesis behind your test – why will the countdown timer increase engagement. If there isn’t a reason for a countdown timer to be in an email, you might not see the boost in engagement that you’re looking for.

Can I track the performance of countdown timers with Litmus?

Yes! Litmus Email Analytics shows your email performance, from open to read rates . You can also use your email service provider to look at your performance.

To determine whether or not your countdown timer was successful, go back to your campaign’s goals. Is it to encourage more people to re-open the email, like our NYE Swag Drop Email, or to get more conversions, like for a Black Friday or Cyber Monday campaign? Take a look at how your countdown timers help you achieve those goals (or not!) as you evaluate it for future campaigns.

How to create an email countdown timer with Litmus Personalize

You don’t need to know how to code HTML to create a countdown timer in your email campaigns. Steps to create your own email countdown timer in Litmus Personalize:

1. Go to your Personalized Content tab. Under “Personalized Content,” click “Countdown Clocks” then choose from one of our many template options
2. Set a time and date for your countdown timer to expire.
3. Customize your countdown timer to the font, color, and sizing that matches your brand and email design from the editor on the right. Alternatively, upload a background image that will appear behind the day, hour, minutes, or seconds in the countdown timer.
   • Best practice is for background images to be small. If you have a larger hero image, we recommend slicing it and using the smaller slice as the background image for the timer.
4. If you want to create a special expiration message, scroll down on the right hand side under “Expiration State” and choose a custom message or upload an image in its place
5. Similarly, create a fallback for email clients that do not support countdown timers by going to MPP Fallback state to choose whether to hide the countdown timer entirely or create your own fallback option.
6. When you’re ready, click “Preview” and double-check that it appears correctly. If it looks good, click save and copy HTML.
7. Place that HTML in your email and you are good to go!

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Examples of countdown timers in the wild

Countdown timers are extremely versatile. It’s a common tactic to promote sales or events, but that’s just the beginning of what you can use them for:

How retailers use countdown timers

In retail, they’re predominately used to countdown until the start or end of a promotion. They’re also used a lot to visually show delivery information (e.g. two hours left to shop for next-day delivery). Brands also use them for product launches, inventory drops, or in-store events.

This timer from Kate Spade, placed directly beneath the logo, is a lovely example of a small, punchy timer that captures attention.

How financial services can use countdown timers

While financial firms have more regulations around what they can and cannot send in their emails, they can still use personalization effectively. Hard deadlines—around tax season, retirement contributions, your insurance coverage, or other application dates—can all use a countdown timer.

We created this example in Litmus Personalize to show you what it could look like.

How travel and hospitality uses countdown timers

For hotels, airlines, and restaurants, countdown timers can build a lot of excitement. It might be a countdown until your check-in time or flight, for when tickets go on sale for a special event or dinner, or to a certain local holiday.

How B2B companies use countdown timers

We’re big fans of the idea that B2B doesn’t have to mean boring. Embed a countdown timer to surprise customers for their loyalty anniversary, remind new customers about their free trial ending, or promote your biggest sale of the year.

This example from Wix shows how you can make the countdown timer front and center in your email, with a few supporting details on the promotion, to really make an impact.

How nonprofits and higher ed use countdown timers

They could use a countdown timer to create urgency around a donation matching time period or around application deadlines for school, a grant, or scholarships.

We created this example in Litmus Personalize to show you what it could look like.

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Deliver personalized content at scale. Use live polls, dynamic content, and advanced targeting to drive results.

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Best practices for using countdown timers

Like any email marketing tactic, you don’t want to overdo it. While they can be powerful elements to add to your emails, avoid using countdown timers too frequently. Here’s how to make the most of them:

Email marketing strategy for countdown timers

If you’re doing a countdown in an email, make sure it’s tied to the rest of your promotional strategy. Will this be the last sale of the season, for example? Or the best one of the year? Ask yourself these questions as you plan your next email marketing campaign:

What types of campaigns are email countdown timers best suited for?

Use them for big events, pricing promotions, or personal things like a birthday or holiday countdown. “We only add them to an email campaign or promotion that ends,” says Carin Slater, Lifecycle Email Marketing Manager here at Litmus. “We used to put countdown timers in all of our event webinar emails, for example, but we found that because webinars are recorded, there wasn’t enough urgency there.”

Countdown timers can also be used in transactional emails (or operational emails). Below is an example from a transactional send to Litmus Live 2022 attendees featuring a countdown timer not necessarily to drive action but more so create excitement for an upcoming event.

How long is too long for a countdown timer?

Countdown timers don’t create a sense of urgency and scarcity on their own. They work together with the rest of your promotion to do so—that’s why you should only run a countdown timer on a campaign that actually ends. We’d also recommend not using timers when the promotion ends too far in the future because short time windows mean openers are more inclined to take action.

Do countdown timers affect your deliverability?

Like anything with deliverability…it depends. (We know! So frustrating!) There’s nothing inherent about a countdown timer that trips a spam filter, for example. But if you overuse countdown timers—or consistently fake out your subscribers and lose trust with them—it could impact your engagement, which can negatively impact your sender reputation if your subscribers decide to start marking your emails as spam 

Can you include other kinds of personalization with a timer?

Yes, of course! Litmus Personalize allows you to add multiple layers of real-time personalization in your emails alongside a countdown timer. A great example of pairing a countdown timer with other live content is with personalized images. Creating a dynamic, individualized personalized email experience at scale? *chef’s kiss*

This timer from fashion retailer Topshop includes the recipient’s name (via personalized imagery) above the countdown timer, adding a touch of personalization as well as urgency to shop.

It still blows our minds that 56% of marketers personalize less than 25% of emails they send. Countdown timers are just one way to personalize your emails—the more you can use subscriber data and behavior to build a dynamic, individualized email, the better performance you’ll see. 

Part of why marketers don’t use personalization as much as they could is because it has a reputation for being finicky and difficult to implement with email client support and coding hoops you have to jump through. With Litmus Personalize, you can easily add all kinds of dynamic content without needing to be a coding whiz. The more creative, the better.

A note on the ethics of using a countdown timer

Urgency and scarcity are both effective psychological tools to encourage more people to sign up or purchase from you. But you should use them sparingly, and ethically. 

Don’t mislead your subscribers by making them think a sale is ending when you’ll be running another one in 24 hours or telling them there are only a few items left in stock when you have warehouses full of inventory. Countdown timers can create a sense of urgency around an event or promotion, but only if the event or promotion actually has an end date.

“If you say something is going to end, then it has to end,” says Slater. “Otherwise, it’s a breach of trust. It’s like the boy who cried wolf, essentially. People aren’t going to trust you after that. Especially if you do it repeatedly.”

If you create a false sense of urgency with a countdown timer your subscribers will remember and adding a countdown timer to your next email might not have the impact that you would like.

How to message and label your countdown timers

For maximum impact, clear messaging is essential to making a countdown timer meaningful and easy to understand. In some cases, we’ve seen countdown timers placed at the top of an email without any other information. “If it’s just a banner across the top with no explanation or reason as to why it’s there, it won’t perform as well. Why are we counting down? Why should I be excited about this?” says Slater.

This example from lingerie retailer Boux Avenue uses clear, informative messaging, but still keeps the brand’s identity at the forefront. 

Then, make sure to put time labels on every countdown timer so recipients know how long they have left before the timer runs out. Don’t forget to include days, hours, minutes, or seconds to make it clear to subscribers what you’re counting down to. Avoid only using numbers as this can be confusing.

In this example from sports nutrition and wellness retailer Bulk, they’ve clearly marked out the hours, minutes, and seconds in the header image. This seems like a simple step, but it’s one too many brands forget.

Increase conversions with Litmus Personalize

It doesn’t take fancy coding to add a countdown timer or other powerful personalization tactics to your next email campaign. Use Litmus Personalize to create gorgeous email designs tailored to individual subscribers. Learn more >