5 reasons to add countdown timers to your emails

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.