Email guide

How to add a countdown timer to Amazon SES

With SES you own the HTML outright, so there is nothing to work around: the countdown is an <img> tag you place wherever you like. Because the tikio link stores the deadline, one SES template can serve a whole campaign — and you can move the deadline without resending anything.

Create your free countdown Jump to steps

  1. Design your countdown in tikio

    Create a timer in the tikio editor: pick colors, fonts, labels and the languages you need. What you see in the editor is exactly what lands in the inbox — the timer is delivered as a regular animated image.

  2. Get the code

    Click Get code, choose “In an email”, pick how the countdown works — until a date, a personal timer per subscriber, or repeating on a schedule — and copy the code. The link stores the timer, so you can change the deadline any time, even after sending: emails already sent pick it up within minutes.

    URL 
    https://t.tikio.io/e/a1b2.gif

  3. Add the timer to your SES email or template

    Paste the snippet below into the HTML part of your message. In SES templates, Handlebars-style replacement variables are substituted inside the URL from the template data you send with each destination — which is how a recipient key or, for links set up through the API, a per-recipient deadline gets in.

    HTML 
    <img src="https://t.tikio.io/e/a1b2.gif" alt="Offer ends soon" width="480" style="border:0;max-width:100%;height:auto;" />

Per-recipient evergreen deadlines

Pass your own stable per-recipient identifier as the key in the template data — a user ID rather than an email address. Each recipient’s countdown then starts at their first open.

HTML 
<img src="https://t.tikio.io/e/a1b2.gif?uid={{userId}}" alt="Offer ends soon" width="480" style="border:0;max-width:100%;height:auto;" />

FAQ

Questions, answered

Does this work with SendBulkTemplatedEmail?

Yes. With a link whose deadline comes from the recipient (set up through the tikio REST API), put the replacement variables in the URL and supply per-destination template data — each recipient gets their own deadline and key from a single SES call.

Do I need to host the image myself?

No. The image is served by tikio from its own hostname, so nothing goes into S3 and nothing is attached to the message.

Will the extra request affect my SES sending quota?

No. Your quota counts messages sent; the timer is fetched by the recipient’s email client when the message is opened, entirely outside SES.

Other email platforms

Your first countdown is minutes away

Free during early access — no credit card required. Design once, paste one snippet, and the timer ticks on every open.

Create your free countdown