A countdown GIF is a picture with an animated timer that clocks time until some event: the start of sales, the end of sales, a reserved abandoned cart, a limited offer, an early sign-up for a webinar, and so on. This is what a typical countdown email looks like:
Timers exist either in a GIF format or an HTML script and can be anywhere in email templates. They can have lots of customization options and be placed either above the main image or inside it.
Most of the time, a countdown timer GIF is used to tell your clients that something won’t last forever and they’d better hurry up. These include event notifications, offer deadlines, and so on. However, there’s one more reason to occasionally use timers — to introduce the element of surprise. Let’s explore!
Timers as marketing tools are supposed to speed your clients up towards a certain action. As they see seconds tick away, clients should feel more inclined to do what you want them to. After all, when something is scarce or limited that alerts people — the good old fear of missing out.
Fear of missing out, in its turn, is a quite old and common marketing tactic with proven efficiency. For example, one study from 2021 shows that people remember FOMO-based Facebook Ads a lot better compared to those without FOMO content. Another study conducted on Egyptian Millennials showed that FOMO may increase conformity consumption, which means buying to be like others. Finally, there’s a study related to influencer marketing that confirms the role of FOMO in creating the buying intention.
If you use a countdown GIF timer in an email that teases early access to a product or an event, this may be viewed as a sign of care about your clients. You can even push it further and add a calendar reminder button, like Litmus did.
And if you’re using countdown timers in sales emails, they may also help people make decisions about when to start shopping. For example, if you notify them about your Black Friday offers a day or two before the sales season starts, your customers will have enough time to evaluate your offer and decide if that’s what they need. And, if they like it, they’re more likely to buy from you and not another shop selling similar stuff.
We have already discussed some studies related to FOMO in marketing. Countdown timers induce FOMO, so, they must be as effective as any other FOMO-based content in ads and promotion, right? Not really. There’s not much research on how countdown timers perform, and the data is a bit inconclusive.
For example, an old case study of The Diamond Store Black Friday emails showed that a countdown timer GIF in a promotional email can yield a 400% increase in conversions. A study by EmailSoldiers, however, didn’t find a significant difference between emails with and without a countdown timer. This brings us to a simple conclusion: take nothing for granted in email marketing, try things on your audience to see how they respond.
And, if you want to learn more about the actual patterns behind email clicks, check out our definitive guide on the click-through rate.
There are dozens of articles on countdown timers in email marketing blogs and other sources, so you may assume the trick is quite popular, even overused maybe? Also, Apple Mail Privacy Protection updates put limits not just on open rate tracking but also on dynamic content. This means that for some Apple users who enabled MPP, countdown timers in emails may end up being non-functional. So, should you use them in emails and do they still carry an element of surprise?
Long story short, yes. If you introduce your subscribers to countdown timers sparingly, you won’t fail to surprise them. Just don’t put them in every sales campaign of yours and maybe experiment with design. For example, why not make a vertical timer?
Since you deal with an animated image you must be sure you know how to use it so it works correctly (more on this later). You should only add a countdown GIF when you mean it. Urgency is a big hook in email marketing but it can’t be the only strategy: not every product is “limited” and not every event “will end soon”.
If you mean a deadline and are sure your clients will respond to it — great. To check how emails with countdown timers perform, testing is essential: do A/B tests to know for sure.
There are many email types where countdown timers come in handy. Long story short, they can be useful in campaigns where you need to speed up your customers’ decision-making. Let’s take a look at some of the most prominent use cases.
Discount codes tend to have expiration dates — use the code a second past it and you won’t save the money. To prompt subscribers to use their discount codes before it’s too late, marketers can use countdown timer GIFs.
Wait, actually, we did it once! When we ran a campaign for the oldest and most loyal subscribers of FWD: by Selzy newsletter, we sent an extra “Last chance” email — and yep, it had a countdown timer.
Placing a deadline is common in abandoned cart emails and you can go the extra mile and highlight it. Notice that a CTA button is placed right under the timer — a straightforward way to influence a potential customer.
Notify your clients about a VIP or early access and offer a reward for joining. It’s not only about urgency but also care or even a form of secrecy — you offer your clients something that won’t be for everyone.
Tell your customers that prices change soon. You may get more sales, they may be happy with a reduced price and a great service — top content.
A deadline is a proven way to get people into action. Why not use it? Make the most of a sales period by showing your customers a deadline on an animated GIF. That’s why using a countdown timer GIF is a common trope in “Last chance” emails like this one from WiX.
A clock ticking down can be an interesting solution for special events like Black Friday or Cyber Monday when email marketing is all about maximizing the potential of sales. In such campaigns, a timer is often used to demonstrate: hey, customer, it’s your last chance to shop with a discount.
But it’s not always the case. Here’s a curious example of a special event email with a countdown timer. Here, Market House, a meat delivery service, prompts customers to order now so they have something to grill on Memorial Day. No special offers — in this case, it’s just customer care.
Countdown reminders look natural when you advertise an upcoming webinar or live stream. Sending a reminder with a countdown timer GIF is not just customer care — you’ll also get more visitors since you’re prompting customers to sign up with a bit of urgency.
Advertise a last-chance product or a limited edition with a timer. Feel free to combine it with fun content as in the example below.
Launch an email contest with prizes. A timer may be a retention tool as it notifies people that they’re still in the game.
There are two ways you can insert a timer into an email: a GIF or an HTML script. One big difference between the two tools is how they count time. In addition, HTML may be a bit of a challenge to use in comparison to GIFs.
An HTML script shows only real time. Say, you set a timer at 01:00:00 and place it into an email. If you re-open it in five minutes, it will display 00:55:00. An HTML script is programmed to a certain end date and it won’t stop until it reaches it.
A GIF will always restart. It’ll always display 01:00:00 every time you re-open an email or update the page.
This, however, doesn’t mean GIFs are useless tools in email marketing. Given that an average inbox is flooded by many emails, it’s fair to assume customers only open an email once so the countdown will only be seen once.
GIFs are also slightly simpler to use and, in general, more people are familiar with GIFs than scripts. Our recommendation is unless you’re sure you know what you’re doing, HTML may not be worth all the fuss.
There are three options: choose a countdown timer from the internet, create one on a specialized website, or customize one in an ESP.
This is most likely the easiest path. The internet is full of animated pictures and you can choose timers that suit you from popular services like Pinterest or Tenor. You can access the result from a Google page with pictures and choose one of many available designs.
Online services help users design their countdown timers. There’s not much difference between them as the principle is similar: pick a template, choose background and digit colors, set the event time. Once done, save the result as a GIF.
Some of those services include extra features and tools like embedding a link into a timer but the option may be paid. Here’s a brief overview of the services.
| Pricing | Best thing about it | Worst thing about it | |
| Mara | Free for regular use, from $39/month for extra features | Ease of use | Few customization options |
| Countingdownto | Free for regular use, $28/ a month, or a one-time payment of $195 for extra features | You can test how a timer displays in your email | The “‘powered by countingdownto”’ caption |
| Motion Mail | A limited free plan or $10$/ a month for the cheapest plan | You can track how many people viewed a timer | Nothing |
| Nifty | $20/ a month (billed annually) | Almost unlimited customization | Expensive if you don’t plan to use it often |
Some ESPs allow you to create countdown timers right in the email builder. Unlike external services, it’s pretty convenient because you can do all the email building and customization in one tab. Keep reading to see how you can do it with the Selzy email builder. First, go to the Elements tab in the builder and find Countdown.
Then, drag and drop the Countdown element to your email template. Here’s what it will look like:
Then, click the timer to see the editing menu at the right half of your screen.
Then, it’s time to edit the timer! Here’s what you can edit in the Selzy builder:
You can also add a clickable link to the countdown timer GIF. To do this, scroll down the settings menu to see the Chain icon. Click on it to reveal the text field and enter the link. Quick warning: don’t paste the link with UTM tags — you’ll be able to assign all the tags automatically to each and every email link at the next stage of preparing the campaign.
Once you’re happy with the settings, click the Save button — it’s in the top-right corner of the screen.
Now you have a countdown timer as part of your email.
If you created the countdown timer in your ESP, at this point you don’t have to do anything else besides sending the campaign, so you can skip this part of the article. But if you plan to use a countdown GIF you made or downloaded somewhere else, follow this tutorial.
Since GIF is an image format, you have to insert animated pictures into the image field of your ESP. Let’s break down how it works in the Selzy builder. Start by going to the Elements menu and choosing the Image element.
Once you drag and drop the element, hover over the placeholder image, and click the two arrows in the middle of the small menu. Here it is!
Once you click it, you’ll have a pop-up window that will allow you to upload your own image. As you can see, the GIF format is supported.
Then, upload the countdown timer GIF — here’s what it will look like in the email:
You can also go a harder path and add a countdown timer with an HTML code. When creating it with online services like Mara or Countingdownto you can either save the result as a GIF or HTML code.
The Selzy builder doesn’t have a separate element in the Content menu for embedding raw HTML in the email. However, you can switch to Code mode by clicking a button at the left part of the screen. Here’s what it will look like:
Here, you can choose the part of the email where you want to put your countdown timer GIF, and paste the code — and you’re good to go! And, if you need some editing, you can do it both in the no-code builder and in the code mode, isn’t that cool?
Looking at the examples of emails with countdown timers, you could notice that most of them have a timer embedded into a picture. How did they do it? Let’s take this example from Ray-Ban’s Black Friday campaign, try to break it down, and recreate.
Let’s talk about some analogies. First I want you to think of a hamburger. Yes, that’s right, a hamburger. I’ve drawn an ugly one so that you bear with me and don’t feel the urge to order food. Here it is:
A hamburger can be broken down into ingredients: the buns and a beef patty. Likewise, a picture from an email can be broken down into several pieces. Let’s split the Ray-Ban one into the upper bun and the lower bun with a patty.
Suppose I now want a cheeseburger. I take a slice of cheese and place it on the patty. Here’s what I’m gonna eat now:
So, here’s how it should change our “email meal”: the cheese (a countdown timer in our case) becomes a new part of the picture burger and it must always be placed on the patty (the rest of the picture).
Equipped with the “cheeseburger principle”, you now know what to do — connect three layers (the top of the picture, the countdown timer, and the rest of the picture) in an email builder in your ESP.
First, you need to slice your image into several parts. You can use any image editing software — here’s an example of what it can look like in Figma. I pasted the image three times and used the Crop option.
Then, let’s go and assemble our cheeseburger in the Selzy builder. Here’s what we’ll need to do:
Begin by clicking Start from scratch to get a blank canvas to work with.
Then, go to the Blocks menu, choose Empty, and add three empty one-column blocks.
Your email template will look like this:
Once you have three empty blocks, go to Elements, choose Image, and add images to the first and the third blocks.
You’ll end up with a blank template looking like this:
Then, upload the images and end up with an email that looks like this:
To give it a more seamless look, you need to remove the padding in these two blocks. To do this, click on the block to reveal the settings menu, and set the Padding numbers to 0.
Then, you need to adjust the size of each image so they occupy the entire block. To do this, simply drag the image by the lower right corner.
Now, let’s take a look at our “cheese” block where the countdown timer will be placed. For a seamless look, we need to change this block’s background color. You can do it in the same part of the block settings menu where you set up the background image. To achieve a seamless look, you can use the eyedropper tool to pick the exact light gray color from the images above and below.
Once you adjust the background color, add the countdown timer element following the instructions above — and you’re good to go!
I also changed the background of the entire email template to the light gray color used in the picture — that way, all the blocks will blend together seamlessly. To change the background color, click on any part of the screen around the email template to reveal the Group settings menu. Then, edit the Background color.
Although it’s a great way to add a countdown timer GIF to the email, you shouldn’t make image-only emails. Spammers use this trick a lot, so if you send a campaign like this, you’ll end up in spam. However, you can use it as a small design element in the email that actually has text and clickable buttons.
This article was originally published in December 2021 and was updated in May 2024 to make it more relevant and comprehensive.
