The most efficient way to deliver high fidelity personalization in your daily email, and drive over 11x return on spend (works seamlessly with your existing email service provider).
Infinitely expand your brands photography with Curator™ AI. Generate new product photography that’s indistinguishable from the originals, and combines multiple products together.
Create, manage, deploy, and target an unlimited number of personalized messages. Deliver any of the messages from your pool through a single image URL and link embedded within email, SMS, mobile, or on your website.
Zembula connects with any enterprise data source. If you don’t see a specific data source here or have a custom data source, we will always connect it for free.
The most efficient way to deliver high fidelity personalization in your daily email, and drive over 11x return on spend (works seamlessly with your existing email service provider).
Infinitely expand your brands photography with Curator™ AI. Generate new product photography that’s indistinguishable from the originals, and combines multiple products together.
Create, manage, deploy, and target an unlimited number of personalized messages. Deliver any of the messages from your pool through a single image URL and link embedded within email, SMS, mobile, or on your website.
Integrations
Connect with 100+ integrations
Zembula connects with any enterprise data source. If you don’t see a specific data source here or have a custom data source, we will always connect it for free.
Do you want to make your emails stand out? Welcome to the club. Every brand is thinking the same thing and has been over the last decade as open and click rates have fallen.
With competition for attention in the inbox running at an all-time high, you need to come up with better solutions. A big one is looking at creating a sense of urgency in your emails.
You can do that is by adding a countdown timer in email. In real life, we all know what kinds of feelings a countdown clock does. We keep an eye on the clock as it ticks down. It makes us move and take action. We want to ‘beat the clock’ and win.
Now, imagine how you can apply these same feelings to your emails.
Here are a few reasons why adding online countdown timers can do it.
They help build urgency
We all know that when we feel a sense of urgency, we tend to act. That’s just human nature. You can say a sale or deal is running out until you turn blue in the face, and you’ll get a lot of readers who don’t notice or don’t care.
A countdown clock helps blast that sense of urgency from one to eleven. When your readers see that countdown timer going down, it’s going to make them feel urgency in a way that they never did when they read a generic newsletter announcement.
They are universal
Some amazing email strategies don’t work across industries. Something that works for an eCommerce shop might not work for a travel brand. But countdown clocks and timers are universal. They work across languages, countries, and cultures.
When your customer sees a clock ticking down to zero in their email, they intuitively know exactly what that means. That’s a huge boost for you because it doesn’t matter what industry you’re in. You can use these timers to make an impact.
They are perfect tools for promotion
Are you running a flash sale? What about a price change? Maybe you have a new product release coming. Or a big event you want to tease. You can use a countdown timer in email to get your audience excited in any of these situations (and more).
Regardless of what you’re trying to promote or even the industry you’re in, you can use timers as a way to get the attention of your customers in a personalized way.
Retailers can use it to highlight they have an in-store special event happening for VIPs on their loyalty list.
Travel brands can highlight flash sales to special destinations.
eCommerce brands can promote a new secret product that’s dropping.
Those are just a few ideas. There are plenty more.
They look cool
Sure, this might not be quite as important as some other reasons to start incorporating times, but it still matters. How often do you open an email and immediately close it because it doesn’t catch your attention? Unfortunately, that’s what happens to the vast majority of emails.
Today, brands have seconds to grab a reader or potential customer. So you need to make every single interaction you have with your list count. Email design matters, and the more exciting or cool it looks to your readers, the better your chances of getting those clicks and conversions.
They pique curiosity
Just seeing a timer clock in an email is interesting. When someone sees that clock, they automatically wonder what’s going on with it. What is this timer about? What’s being promoted? Am I missing out on something cool?
Those questions might be enough to stop your readers for another second while they check it out. In the world of the Internet, that second really matters. It can be the difference between people skimming your email and sending it to the archives and looking around for 20 seconds, finding something they like, and clicking to your site.
These five reasons are just some of our favorites. But there are more reasons why including a timer in your emails can matter. If you’re interested in understanding how a live countdown timer can make a difference in your emails, get in touch.
Liz Froment
Liz Froment is a content writer at Zembula. A graduate of University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Liz is a travel aficionado, Boston sports fan, and maple syrup connoisseur.
5 creative ways to use countdown timers in your emails
Ok, you’ve been convinced to start using countdown timers in your emails. Great! Now, you’re stuck at the next hurdle. How exactly should you use them?
There are a few pretty obvious and common uses for online countdown timers, but you can go beyond that in your emails. Getting creative with your countdown timers can take your emails the extra mile, get your customers engaged, and increase your clicks and conversions.
What brand wouldn’t like that?
Here, we’re going to highlight a few ways to start using countdown timers in your emails.
Sales
One of the best uses for a countdown timer is to highlight an upcoming sale. There are a couple of ways you can approach this to get more bang for your buck.
Use your timer to countdown a surprise flash sale. These usually run a few hours or a few days. Have your timer ticking down to when the sale ends. Having a real-time constantly updating countdown clock can help drive a sense of urgency and convince your readers to buy.
Another option is to do a countdown timer that announces a sale, think Black Friday or Cyber Monday. Everyone knows those sales are coming, but including that timer linked to the days can help keep the dates at the top of mind for the people on your list.
Product launches
Have a big product launch coming up? Why not build excitement and curiosity for it by including a countdown clock in the emails you send out to your readers.
A clock that ticks down to the special product launch unveiling, live stream, or event can get people very excited that something cool is coming. They’ll watch the clock to make sure they are there for the big news.
Events
You can also use your countdown timers to highlight events. Big or small, it doesn’t matter. The timer can help drive action.
Here’s one example:
This timer highlights an event at a local bar that matches up with live tv. Something as simple as reminding people of an event like this, even if it’s small, can drive them to engage with the email and trigger a sense of FOMO. If your customer feels like they might be missing out by not attending your event, it increases the chance that they might take action.
Something else you can use a timer for is special events. Let’s say you’re having a special VIP only in-store sale, meet and greet, or dinner. Send out an email to your loyalty members and add a little bit of urgency, reminding them when they have to sign up by or when the event takes place so they won’t miss sign-ups.
Abandoned cart
Yup, you can use timers for abandoned cart updates too. Think of a real-time timer as something that can act as a notification bar.
Send a regular email, such as a weekly newsletter update, but right at the top is a personalized countdown for your customer to see they need to act fast to complete their purchase.
If you want to really make an impact, do what this notification does and include a discount. The person who opens their email sees they have items in their cart, and a countdown clock highlighting a coupon will be pretty compelled to complete the transaction.
Surprises
Customers loved to be surprised and delighted, we know this, it’s one of the big cores of marketing. It’s why it’s becoming so common for brands to send out small discounts or free shipping codes or little gifts to customers and loyalty reward members.
You can use your countdown timers in email in the same way. Do you want to surprise and delight your most loyal customers? Send them an email for a free prize (drink, ice cream, etc.) that’s on a countdown timer. They’ve got a few hours to wander into your nearest store and claim their prize.
And, since you can use real-time geolocation updates in your emails too. They’ll always have your closet location in the email every time they open it.
Ready to start using some countdown timers in your marketing? We can help. Give us a call today, and we’ll help you get started.
Liz Froment
Liz Froment is a content writer at Zembula. A graduate of University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Liz is a travel aficionado, Boston sports fan, and maple syrup connoisseur.
How real-time email notification banners can save you time and money
Notification banners have become pretty common across the internet for a while. They are an easy way for brands to communicate special events, news, and other critical information right on site.
Land on the site, your eye goes to the notification banner, and now you’ve got the information you need to know.
You’ve probably come across a few without even realizing it.
Here are two recent examples:
Both of these provide visitors with up-to-date information that the brands think they need to have the second they land on the page.
Now, think about how your customers can benefit from getting that same information, updated continuously, in their email too.
You can with email notification banners.
A better way to update your customers
For many brands, email is the main channel of communication. Your customers are generally going to find out what’s happening with your company through reading newsletters and product updates.
However, many brands (maybe yours too) struggle with keeping on top of sharing important news via email.
There are a few reasons for that.
The first has to do with the inbox. It’s already crowded. Your customers have their attention stretched thin by everything going on in their lives, plus the sheer amount of content they’re exposed to daily.
That makes it harder to communicate. Your sales email is often more likely to get opened over an email that’s about updates to shipping times or an event cancelation.
Add to that the second issue; trying to walk the line of just enough contact and too much communication. You want to get in touch with readers, and if you’re sending target and personalized emails, they want to hear from you too.
But sending too many emails can flip the switch. Suddenly, you’re stuff, regardless of what it is, ends up ignored or in the archives folder.
That’s not great.
Email notification banners help offer a better solution.
Add important updates to any email
The concept behind a notification bar in email is the same as using it on a website. It sits right at the top of the email and shares critical information.
Notification banners are dynamic, which means they can be updated to share real-time information at the customer’s moment-of-open, without you needing to pause your send or tweak a bunch of code.
These banners transform any email into a source of news and information, just like your website. It’s another place where your readers and customers can get the updates you want to share without bombarding them with more emails they might not even open. And, if you have a special event coming up, for example, you can set the banner to give updates as the event gets closer automatically — no need to go back in and continuously add more information.
Add it to your standard newsletter, and you can share your latest update on website maintenance or give readers a head’s up that a special event that was happening next week got postponed.
Readers don’t have to go searching through their inbox for that email they think they remember seeing. Instead, it’s right there at the top of any email you send them.
Add another layer of personalization
You don’t have to use notification bars just for news, either. There are plenty of other applications too. These bars can go a step beyond your website and provide personalized information targeted to specific readers.
Banners work for:
Special news updates
Abandoned cart notifications
Shipping updates
Sales
Special events
Loyalty program updates
And more
See the possibilities?
With notification banners, you can turn virtually every email into something personalized to your customer. When they know they’re going to see that sort of information in the emails they get from you, do you think they’re going to be more interested in opening them?
Probably. It’s a great way to get your readers excited about seeing your brand in their inbox.
If you don’t have an update, personalized info, or news to share, the notification banner pixel becomes transparent. When opening your email, readers will never even know it’s there.
Interested in learning more? Zembula can help you create this type of email and much more. Check out what we have to offer.
Liz Froment
Liz Froment is a content writer at Zembula. A graduate of University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Liz is a travel aficionado, Boston sports fan, and maple syrup connoisseur.
