How to Embed a Countdown Timer in an Email

Embedding a countdown timer in an email means inserting a live image URL that displays the current countdown time on every open. The image is hosted on PicTimer's servers and redraws itself each time a recipient's email client fetches it — no scripts, no special configuration, no email client compatibility issues.

How to Embed It

1. Generate your countdown timer on PicTimer. Set the end date and time. Choose your display style.
2. Copy the embed/image link. PicTimer gives you a direct image URL — this is what you embed.
3. Insert it into your email using an image block. In any ESP with a drag-and-drop editor, add an Image block and use the PicTimer URL as the image source. Most editors have a field labeled "Image URL" or "Source."

For Custom HTML Emails

If you are building email templates in raw HTML, the embed is a standard img tag:

<a href="https://yoursite.com/offer" target="_blank">
  <img src="YOUR_PICTIMER_IMAGE_URL"
       alt="Offer ends in..."
       width="500"
       style="display:block;max-width:100%;border:0;" />
</a>

Replace YOUR_PICTIMER_IMAGE_URL with the URL from your PicTimer dashboard. Wrapping in an anchor tag makes the timer clickable and directs recipients to your offer.

Compatibility

Because the embed is a standard img tag, it is compatible with every email client: Gmail, Outlook (all versions), Apple Mail, Yahoo Mail, Samsung Mail, and every major mobile client. No special handling required on any platform.

For platform-specific embedding guides: Outlook · Klaviyo · all other platforms.

To understand the conversion impact: see our case study on countdown timers across 4.2 million sends.