Email marketing is one of the most powerful digital marketing tools. Using a countdown timer within your emails can help amplify your marketing campaign engagement rates.

In this article, we will examine how you can harness the power of an email countdown timer to help motivate your email subscribers to click your call-to-action (CTA) button and act proactively.

Countdown timers are often associated with conversion rate optimization (CRO) and help businesses improve their ROI. Creating an email countdown timer is a vital skill for all email developers and marketers.

Countdown timers can boost the conversion rates of your email campaigns. However, marketers should know when to use a countdown timer.

What are Email Countdown Timers?

An email countdown timer is a virtual clock that counts from a set number to zero. The timers are programmed to end at a set time. A countdown timer will be accurate no matter when your reader opens the email.

Companies like Liveclicker can provide programmable countdown timers to integrate into your email marketing content.

By combining the elements of animations and personalizations, email marketers can create an active and engaging tool that is useful for both CRO and ROI.

3 Reasons to Add Countdown Timers to Your Email Marketing

Knowing when to use countdown timers within your email marketing campaigns is essential. Here are five reasons why you should use countdown timers:

Countdown Timers create a sense of urgency

There is no better way to create a sense of urgency within your readers than using a countdown timer. Countdown timers let readers know the opportunity in front of them won’t last forever.

When placed within an email, a timer will display an active countdown, showing readers the amount of time remaining in an active sale. The dynamic display creates a greater sense of urgency than a standard static date.

The fear of missing out (FOMO) is a proven marketing strategy to ensure people act. Time sensitivity helps people work harder on projects to meet deadlines.

Email subscribers receive the same effect when marketers include an email countdown timer for a sale or deal. Consumers who might have otherwise passed on your offer may be swayed by the sight of time ticking slowly away. Every second that they don’t act is a missed opportunity. The realization that they are missing out is more apparent.

Animations are often more engaging than static images.

For example, companies like to increase brand awareness within their email list about their flash sale on custom-branded decals. In that case, they can create an email with a countdown timer to state when their sale ends, making their customers want to buy in on the action without losing out.

Countdown Timers add excitement to contests

Businesses constantly offer discounts and specials. However, when they are promoting a deal, they are trying to get customers to purchase a product or service. Contests are slightly different.

A contest allows people to win an item or service without requiring anything in return. However, this also presents a problem: consumers that have the opportunity to get something for nothing often feel the deal is too good to be true.

Combined with the concern that they are statistically unlikely to win, many consumers may pass on the offer. If businesses want to get their customers to enter the contest, they must use FOMO.

Using an email countdown timer to advertise the contest adds a degree of certainty and authority to the contest’s legitimacy.

The email countdown timer informs consumers that once the timer reaches zero, there won’t be an opportunity to win anymore. More often than not, this overpowers any reservations they might have about entering the contest.

Giveaways are another great marketing strategy to help keep your subscribers engaged, learn what they like, and inform them that you care about them. Using a timer makes it easier to accomplish your giveaway goals.

Countdown Timers are helpful for nonprofit marketing

Keeping with marketing efforts that don’t involve sales, nonprofits are uniquely positioned with their promotional efforts.

Nonprofits know all about marketing fundamentals: conveying a sense of urgency and engaging with the viewers’ emotions are core aspects of marketing — whether you’re making sales or collecting donations.

Countdown Timers for Black Friday & Cyber Monday

The Black Friday & Cyber Monday (BFCM) countdown has begun. Marketers can use BFCM Signup countdown timers to increase sales on BFCM. These timers are essentially a countdown timer display bar that is focused on growing your email list before your BFCM offer is live.

Leading up to BFCM, marketers can use this countdown timer to offer new website visitors a special discount code to join your email list before Black Friday. Marketers can then adjust the expiration dates of the discount codes to help encourage new subscribers to make their first purchase before BFCM.

When a BFCM offer officially begins, business owners can invite new customers back to their online stores through email or text outreach.

BFCM timers create a sense of urgency around the product offer you have available.

Use Starbucks’s seasonal Pumpkin Spice Latte as an example. Every year, customers are hyped for the fall, due to the simple fact that the flavor is only available for a limited time. The urgency tactic works so well that sales of pumpkin-flavored drinks at Starbucks reached an all-time high in 2020.

Marketers don’t need to be multinational companies or chain brands to use urgency to bring in business.

A robust list is critical to BFCM success. Thanks to Privy’s PFCM Signup Countdown Bar, you’ll have an even bigger list to share your offer with your customers. The BFCM offer countdown bar is built to bring awareness to your BFCM-only offer and increases your customer conversion rate optimization. Customers who land on your site over BFCM will see a display bar that tells them exactly how much time they have left to buy the offers available.

The Takeaway From Email Countdown Timers

An email countdown timer may seem like a relatively homogenous tool, but the more it gets used, the more it will find its natural place in your email marketing campaign.

Limited-time sales, short-term product offers, and time-sensitive events are a few ways you can integrate a timer into your content. You’re not only grabbing people’s attention, you’re also conveying a sense of urgency.

Email countdown timers come back to the benefits of specificity in content. ‘Click here” is not as appealing as “click here to get a free quote.”

The same goes for “This offer is ending soon,” which is not nearly as effective and impactful as “this offer ends in 10 hours, 11 minutes, and 19 seconds.”

Email countdown timers have three remarkable qualities:

  • They are personal and adaptable to any timeframe.
  • They are animated, so businesses don’t have to settle for something static.
  • They are versatile and able to be used across various industries.

Email countdown timers should be used to create a sense of urgency and to help customers push past their reservations about engaging with the product or service you are trying to improve engagement on.