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Putting a countdown timer into your ConvertKit emails is a fantastic way to emphasise the urgency in your paid offer, be that during a full live launch, flash sale or in evergreen funnel. It really focuses your subscribers' minds that there is something happening that needs their immediate attention!
Here are my 3 suggestions for putting a countdown timer in ConvertKit emails:
If the countdown is the same for everyone (e.g. cart close during a live launch):
1. Use a Sendtric countdown timer
Sendtric is a tool that allows you to add smart, clean countdown timers easily to your ConvertKit emails for free!
Reasons I love Sendtric countdown timers:
- The free plan timers are really nice and you can create them in your brand colours.
- No Sendtric branding ?
- When the countdown timer has run out it just show 0 (and I like that. Sometimes the dramatic ‘EXPIRED!‘ is a bit overkill).
- It's super easy to create and embed them:
If you go for the Micro plan (currently $9 a month) you also get loads more customisation options, including fonts and expired timer images.
Alternatively, if the countdown is the same for everyone (e.g. cart close during a live launch):
2. Use a MotionMail countdown timer
Prior to discovering Sendtric, I used to always use MotionMail for my fixed countdown timers.
Reasons I love MotionMail countdown timers:
- More customisation options on the free plan including different styles, font and font size.
- You can name and save your timers to access/edit again later.
The reason I now use Sendtric countdown timers instead of MotionMail is because the free plan MotionMail timer includes MotionMail branding and the timer itself is kind of blurry. If you prefer the style of MotionMail countdown timers, I'd recommend upgrading to the Bootstrap plan (currently $10 per month) for the months you need it.
If the countdown is different for everyone (i.e. an evergreen funnel):
3. Use a Deadline Funnel countdown timer
If you're looking to add ‘real' urgency to your evergreen funnel, you've got to use Deadline Funnel. I don't know of any other tool like it that is so sophisticated for putting synced subscriber-linked countdown timers on both sales pages and in emails. It's incredibly powerful and effective.
Reasons I love Deadline Funnel countdown timers:
- It allows you to ‘expire' the offers after a certain amount of time has passed. You then sync your emails to this length of time. Urgency is really effective for selling, and whilst it's up for debate how genuine you feel this sort of urgency is, Deadline Funnel allows you to ‘close' the offer like you said you would. It's much harder to pitch in a sequence when you're like “oh, buy this now… but if you buy it in 5 weeks, yeah, I suppose the price will be the same…” or much worse “for the next 72 hours it's $200 off…” but then 3 weeks later they click the link and it's still $200 off!
- Loads of templates, styles and customisation options right out the box. And no Deadline Funnel branding.
- You can add extremely effective countdown timers into your ConvertKit emails which will show subscribers exactly how much longer they have left to grab the offer. This synced email countdown timer is only available with Deadline Funnel.
- You can use Deadline Funnel for both evergreen funnels and fixed countdowns where the offer ends at the same time for everyone. So if you run live launches and have an evergreen funnel, you can use Deadline Funnel for both.
- You can also use it for other types of timed offers e.g. tripwire products.
I get it, at $37 a month, Deadline Funnel can feel pricey. But if you have at least a trickle of new subscribers, and you're offering something at least $37, you need just one purchase a month to cover the cost of Deadline Funnel (which should be more than possible when you've got it all set up correctly! Make sure you sign up for my free training on how to do it!)
Oh, and you get a 14 day free trial, so I'd make it your goal to make $37 directly as a result of Deadline Funnel in the next 2 weeks! Up for the challenge??
I hope you found this blog post useful. Please do let me know in the comments if you're using countdown timers in ConvertKit emails or if you're going to try it out as a result of this post.