Countdown Timer Preflight Checklist And Best Practices

Create a sense of urgency in your email and watch as your subscribers engage with and act on your campaign. Here’s everything you need to know about using a countdown timer to create a sense of urgency.

Preflight checklist for emails with a countdown timer

Use this checklist to make sure your urgency-driving email is perfect before you hit send.

• Check that the timer’s expiration date is correct.
• Is the expiration date clearly written so subscribers with screen readers know what expires, and when?
• Make sure your CTA is located right below or near the timer with strong, clear copy.
• Double-check the expiration date one more time.
• Schedule your mailing to begin sending no less than 24 hours ahead of the expiration time to give your subscribers adequate time to see and respond to the email by the time the countdown expires.
  Using send time optimization or time zone sending? Account for these features in your expiration date.
• If you’ve built an A/B test that has countdowns in both emails, make sure you’ve double-checked the expiration in both emails.

Best practices for using countdown timers in email

1. Drive urgency with care. Don’t use a timer in every email to avoid sounding gimicky. That sense of urgency will quickly become ignorable.

2. Be clear. Be crystal clear about what event or deadline the countdown is ticking toward.

3. Keep your timer above the fold. Because you only emphasize urgency when you really mean it, your countdown is important enough to stay front and center.

4. Keep your CTA close by and make it strong. Because urgency results in an increased click-through rate, you’ll want a strong call to action in close proximity to the timer.

Make converting as simple as possible for your subscribers.

5. Don’t mix your messages. Don’t overwhelm your subscribers with too many dynamic elements.Keep everything else simple.

6. Test, test, test. Testing is key to optimizing your emails. A/B test to prove the value of implementing a countdown timer in your emails.

Introducing Countdown Timer from Campaign Monitor

Countdown Timer is Campaign Monitor’s live-updating timer that you can add directly to your emails in the drag-and-drop email builder.

Best of all, adding Countdown Timer to a campaign is simple, quick, and requires no coding. Available to all customers on the Unlimited and Premier plans.

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