Email countdown timer types and behaviors

Counts down to a single global UTC timestamp. When that timestamp arrives, all subsequent image opens automatically render the expired state graphic.

Best for: Black Friday promotions, seasonal sales, product drops, and webinar start times.

Each recipient has their own deadline, stored on their row in a recipient set or sent through the API, on Growth and Agency. The image address carries that recipient's token in r, and the deadline is looked up from the token when the image is drawn. It cannot arrive as an ESP merge tag in the address: the signature covers the whole query, so a value filled in after signing breaks the image for the entire send.

Best for: Cart abandonment sequences, price-drop alerts, personalized trial extensions, and voucher codes.

The countdown begins the first time the image address is fetched. The renderer records that instant against the address itself, so one campaign address is one shared clock that starts at the first open by anybody on the list. A clock that starts per person needs an address per person, minted with a recipient token on Growth or Agency.

Note: Because Apple Mail pre-fetches images upon delivery, Apple Mail subscribers will trigger the clock at message receipt.

Calculates the deadline from the send instant carried in the image address as sent, plus the duration set in the template. sent is inside the signature, so it is fixed when the address is generated rather than filled in by your platform at send time. This maintains consistent timing across Apple Mail and standard webmail clients.

Rather than counting down to zero, a count-up timer increments upwards from a past moment.

Best for: Customer anniversary celebrations ("You have been a member for 2 years, 4 months"), uptime status badges, and community milestone trackers.

Resets on a weekly or monthly schedule without template edits.

Best for: Weekly newsletters with Sunday order deadlines or recurring weekend promotion campaigns.