Countdown timers in Campaign Monitor, Moosend and Emma

Campaign Monitor and Moosend both ship a countdown block, and each documents limits that decide whether it fits your campaign. Emma ships none. All three accept a signed timer image from elsewhere, in different places and with different tag forms.

Jump to Campaign Monitor, Moosend or Emma. AWeber, Kit and Drip have a page of their own, and MailerLite has a full setup guide.

Side by side

Where merge tags may go

A timer image from here has a signed address, and its HMAC signature covers every parameter. A merge tag inside that address gets filled in after the signature was taken, so the two stop matching and every recipient is served a grey “image unavailable” card. The response is still HTTP 200, which is why none of these platforms will report a problem.

So there are two shapes. One address for the whole send is available on the free plan, and each reader still sees the time left as of their own open. The other is one address per recipient, stored in a custom field and made before the send by the REST API’s batch endpoint or a recipient set exported as a CSV, on Growth or Agency. In both, merge tags stay in the link and the alt text, which are not signed.

Campaign Monitor

Campaign Monitor’s own countdown block

Campaign Monitor’s countdown timer article is unusually complete about its limits. The block is “Available on the Unlimited and Premier monthly plans”. You drag a Countdown block into a section column and set an expiry date. Then the constraints:

• “Countdown timers are only supported in campaigns. Journeys and transactional emails are not supported.” A countdown copied into another email type is removed.
• “Expiry times can be set up to 90 days in the future.”
• “Expiry times are based on your account time zone, not your recipients’ time zones.”
• “Countdown timer fonts aren’t customizable.” The background takes the section’s colour, and the text is set to black or white automatically.
• “To keep file sizes low, countdown timers will count down for five minutes, and then loop.”
• “Countdown timers have no alt-text.”

Its Outlook note is direct. The timer is an animated GIF. On Outlook 2007 to 2019 for Windows, Campaign Monitor says, it “will only show the first frame of the timer and won’t play the rest of the animation.”

Use the block when a campaign on one of those plans needs one deadline inside 90 days and its styling is acceptable. A signed timer from here is an ordinary image, so the campaigns-only rule and the 90-day ceiling do not apply to it. It also takes alt text you write, and a deadline per recipient from Growth.

Where a signed timer goes in Campaign Monitor

Campaign Monitor’s personalization article lists where tags work in its email builder: “Links”, “Text blocks”, “Buttons” and “Images from a URL”. So a shared deadline’s signed address goes in as an image from a URL. A field holding a per-recipient address can be used there as a tag.

Tags are generated from the field name. Campaign Monitor’s example is a “Date of birth” field, which “generates [Dateofbirth,fallback=] as the tag”. A field named ET Image URL therefore gives a tag like [ETImageURL,fallback=]. With nothing after the equals sign, the article says, you can drop ,fallback= entirely. Check the generated tag in your list’s field settings rather than typing it from memory.

Two numbers from the same article. A list can have “up to 50 more custom fields” beyond Name and Email address. And a missing value with no fallback inserts a space, which for an image address means no image.

Testing in Campaign Monitor

The personalization article warns that the web version of a test email “uses fallback terms rather than subscriber-specific data”. Check a per-recipient image by sending to your own address on the list, with your field holding a real signed address.

Moosend

Moosend’s own Timer item

Moosend’s campaign items article describes a Timer item that goes into an empty full-width layout. It has two themes, Plain and Boxes, an expiration date, a font family, and colours for the labels and the numbers. Click Generate Timer to finish.

The limit is in a note: “The timer expiration date and time is based on your time zone and expires at the same time for all users.” Every recipient counts to the same moment. For a single sale that is the right behaviour, and the Timer item does it.

Where a signed timer goes in Moosend

For anything else, the same article documents an HTML item. Drag it into an empty layout and click it to open the HTML settings. Then, in Moosend’s words, “In the HTML content field, copy and paste the HTML code snippet you want to use in the design and then press Enter on your keyboard.”

Moosend’s image item takes a dragged image, or “an image from another source” through its image picker. The article does not say that the picker takes a URL, so the HTML item is the documented route.

The field tag in Moosend

Moosend’s personalization tags give #recipient:name# and #recipient:email#. A custom field is #recipient:custom field#, and Moosend’s example is #recipient:Country#. A field named et_image_url becomes #recipient:et_image_url#:

<a href="https://yourstore.com/sale" target="_blank" rel="noopener">
  <img src="#recipient:et_image_url#" alt="#recipient:name#, your offer ends soon" width="600" height="200" border="0" style="display:block; width:100%; max-width:600px; height:auto; border:0;" />
</a>

Moosend documents these tags in campaign content, not specifically inside an image attribute. Send a real campaign to yourself before you rely on it.

Emma

Does Emma have its own countdown timer

Not in its editor. Emma’s Content Tab article lists fifteen content blocks, from Title to Events, and none is a timer. Emma’s own blog post on countdown timers, dated 8 January 2020, says “Companies like Liveclicker can provide you with countdown timers to integrate right into your content.”

Where a signed timer goes in Emma

Emma’s HTML block article is the route. In a drag and drop campaign, drag the HTML block into place and paste code into the HTML Properties panel. The editor strips “script tags or iframe tags”, and its list of allowed tags includes img, with src, alt, width, height and border among its accepted attributes.

Emma also warns that “Emma Support cannot provide troubleshooting or guidance for custom code”. Change as little of the snippet as you can.

The field tag in Emma

Emma’s standard tags take the form [% member:first_name default="" %], and any contact field can be used the same way. A field named et_image_url is [% member:et_image_url default="" %].

That tag contains double quotes, so the attribute around it needs single quotes:

<a href="https://yourstore.com/sale" target="_blank" rel="noopener">
  <img src='[% member:et_image_url default="" %]' alt="Your offer ends soon" width="600" height="200" border="0" style="display:block; width:100%; max-width:600px; height:auto; border:0;" />
</a>

Emma’s personalization article says its tags “can be used in paragraph, list, title, and button blocks”, and the HTML block is not on that list. Its standard tags page adds that tags “do not always work as expected” on landing pages, in custom API-created fields and for some legacy accounts, “and should be used at your own risk”. Its own advice applies: “Always send a test of your campaign to ensure that your personalization tags are working as expected.”

What your recipients will see

On all three, what happens after delivery is up to the mail client. Campaign Monitor’s own article names the Outlook case, where Windows versions from 2007 to 2019 show only the first frame. Timers from here put the time left into that first frame, so the Outlook reader sees a correct countdown that does not move. Countdown timers in Outlook has the version-by-version detail, drawn from documentation. I have not yet watched a timer from here render in a real inbox.

Questions and answers

Does Campaign Monitor have a countdown timer?

Yes, a Countdown block in the email builder, on the Unlimited and Premier monthly plans. It works in campaigns only, up to 90 days out, in your account time zone, and loops after five minutes.

Does Moosend have a countdown timer?

Yes, a Timer item with Plain and Boxes themes. Moosend documents that it expires at the same moment for every recipient, based on your time zone.

Does Emma have a countdown timer block?

No. The drag and drop editor’s fifteen content blocks include none. Put a timer image from a timer service in an HTML block.

Can I put a merge tag inside the timer image URL?

Not inside a signed address. The value would be written in after signing, and every recipient would get the grey “image unavailable” card. Instead, store a complete signed address in a field and make that field’s tag the entire src.

What does a timer cost here for these platforms?

One deadline for the whole send is on the free plan, with 5,000 image opens a month. Starter, at $19 a month, covers 250,000 opens a month, and a deadline per recipient needs Growth at $49 a month. Each plan’s limits are on pricing.