Add a Stylized Countdown Timer to Your Follow-up Emails

Evergreen timer

The evergreen timer is designed to help you promote limited-time offers expiring within days or hours after being received.

For example, here is a countdown timer for a welcome offer expiring in 48 hours 👇

Now that you’ve seen examples, let’s walk you through the steps of adding a countdown timer to your emails and setting things up.

How to set up a countdown timer in your email

Once in the email editor, place the cursor where you want to add the timer – that’s typically at the top or bottom of the email – and click on the countdown timer button:

From this point, you can adjust the timer to make it match your branding or the visual theme of the email. For example, you can change the following parameters:

• countdown type (fixed-date or evergreen)
• captions
• background style
• font
• color theme
• alignment

Below we’ll show you how each option works.

Choose countdown type

By default, you create a countdown timer with a fixed date where the time runs out at midnight on the selected date in your time zone. Of course, you can change all three parameters including the date, time, and time zone.

If you switch from a fixed-date to an evergreen timer, all you need is to type how many days or hours it should be counting down:

Check captions (optional)

Regardless of the countdown type, you can remove or change the default captions. This is a handy feature if you’re sending emails in a different language, or if you want to leave the numbers only.

Pick a style

Using the Style menu, you can switch from the default solid background to a separated background and round off the corners:

Pick a font

Apart from the standard text fonts, you can apply special fonts, stylized for Halloween and Christmas 👇

When paired with the right colors, fonts can make a huge difference and add a festive spirit to the email. Speaking of colors…

Select colors

Of all controls, the color picker is the most versatile one. You can change both the background color and the text color using:

• the standard built-in palette
• the palette fetched from your website
• the eyedropper tool, able to pick colors from anywhere on your screen

The eyedropper tool is especially convenient if you want to match the timer’s color theme with the color theme of your email. For example, you can fetch colors from images, GIFs, or buttons.

Choose alignment

Finally, you can change the size and alignment of the timer. To change the size, use the handle at the bottom right corner; to change the alignment, use the corresponding options in the menu on the right:

When choosing the alignment for the timer, the best practice is to maintain the same alignment you’ve chosen for the entire email.

How are you going to use the new tool?

To help you get started, the premade email gallery already includes 3 customizable emails with countdown timers. Next time you’re going to create a follow-up email, feel free to use them as a starting point:

We can’t wait to hear what you think about the new tool, and how you’re going to use it.

Share your thoughts on our Slack channel or tweet us at @getsitecontrol

Got any questions? Feel free to use the live chat or email us at help@getsitecontrol.com