Why countdown clocks in emails are (almost) at an end
Scarcity is an age-old sales strategy, time pressure is a variant of it: If you decide too late, you miss out on the good offer. Countdowns sum it up perfectly: As a buyer, I literally see the seconds I have left to make a purchase decision melt away. So it's no wonder that countdown clocks have become very popular not only on shopping sites but also in promotional emails over the last 10 years. They still work well — even though they are no longer a big surprise for most recipients and, in our experience, the desired uplift effect on conversions has diminished over the last few years.
How exactly do countdown counters work in email newsletters?
Unfortunately, HTML emails are technically much more limited than websites. So it is not possible to include in emails a script , which generates a countdown that is constantly updated and counts down to the end time. Such scripts are usually not executed by email clients for security reasons. There are certainly code solutions that work in some email clients that support CSS3 and external style sheets, but these only make up a small part of the colorful world of apps, clients and device combinations in email marketing. For the best presentation in (almost all) email programs, email countdowns therefore still consist of a animated GIF, which shows the seconds/minutes/hours/days up to a specific point in time. To reduce the loading times of such a countdown, only 30 animation frames/digits are generated at a time (because no one watches a countdown in an email for longer than 30 seconds). Only a placeholder image is integrated into the email itself: when the email is opened, this image is requested from a dynamic image server, which calculates the difference between the current time and the stored end time and generates the countdown down to the exact second. If the email is opened again later, the server determines the current time difference again and counts down the updated 30 seconds to the end time. If the countdown has already expired when you open the email, you can display alternative images (“Sorry, the campaign is over”) or leave all counters at 00:00:00.
How do dynamic countdown clock providers differ?
There are now many providers on the market who have dynamic countdown counters in their portfolio, for example niftyimages, Countingdownto, Mailtimers, Motion mail app, Countdownmail, Promofeatures, sendtric, Litmus personalize and Movableink. Some email service providers and newsletter builders have also integrated the functionality directly into their email editors, such as JUNE, Stripo, Active Campaign, MailerLite, Campaign Monitor, Optimizely, and much more.
The basic functionality of all tools is the same — but there are major differences in design and usability. Depending on the package you have booked, you can configure the countdown display (colors, spacing, font, background image, label texts) more or less flexibly. It is definitely worthwhile to compare the offers in detail or to get advice on which provider suits your own design requirements and target group size or shipping frequency. But even though the design aspects of a successful countdown email are important, there is one consideration that is much more important:
Do email countdowns also work for Apple users with Mail Privacy Protection (AMPP)?
Since the end of 2022, email senders (companies as well as platform providers) have had to deal with Apple Mail Privacy Protection (MPP), which makes it difficult and sometimes impossible to integrate real-time images and individualized dynamic content. The problem: As soon as the first recipient receives an email with activated MPP, Apple downloads the images and delivers the image from the cache to all other MPP users. Email senders can therefore no longer recognize which recipients opened their email or loaded images at what time. On the one hand, this makes any open tracking difficult and, on the other hand, means that dynamic content that is to be integrated at the time of opening cannot be loaded individually. This is fatal for countdowns: Everyone with an active MPP is shown the countdown with the remaining time from the time the first email arrives at Apple — even if they only open the email hours or days later or, for example, retrieves the message a second time later.
Is there no workaround for Mail Privacy Protection? However, with “normal” personalized images, email senders can assign individual IDs in the image link, so that each image is called differently — this avoids the problem of the image cache and loads an individual image into each inbox. Unfortunately, this only partially solves the problem with countdowns: Although the time when the email is received is calculated correctly for each user, this creates the desired advertising pressure. However, each time you call up the advertising email again, the image cached when you first access it is loaded. In the worst case scenario, recipients see a time clock that pretends that an offer that expires soon is still valid for several hours.
So should you completely avoid countdowns in email marketing?
In general, you can still use email countdowns. After much excitement about Apple MPP, senders discover that, depending on the target group, only 15 to 30% of openers have activated privacy mode. If privacy users behave in exactly the same way as the “measurable” recipients, most of the openings will take place within the first 1-2 hours of receiving the email. Therefore, the number of people who see a noticeably and irritatingly incorrect countdown when first opened is not very large. Nevertheless, the user experience remains poor for all privacy users who open their countdown emails later or repeatedly.
Some countdown providers address this issue with rulebooks, which recognize privacy openings when the images are retrieved and for this group of recipients special alternative images Show (“only until 22.2.” instead of “only 2 days, 2 hours and 10 minutes”) or hide the corresponding banner image completely. Such an alternative image may not be as strong as an animated countdown clock, but at least it does not cause any negative side effects. Unfortunately, only a few, usually higher-priced providers offer the option to control alternative privacy images — especially those where countdowns are just one of many dynamic email content features. They include Movable Ink, Litmus Personalize, Sendtric, and Nifty images. The smaller and cheaper providers, which are also suitable for tactical, sporadic use, do not offer any Privacy Open alternatives in the low tariffs.
Our recommendation: Check how many MPP openings you have in your target audience and then consider whether it's worth paying a bit more and investing in a tool that can display alternative images to privacy users. We would be happy to advise you on this and on all other aspects of your email marketing.
