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 tikio keeps the deadline in the URL, one SES template can serve every campaign — you change a template variable, not the markup.

  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. Publish and copy the image URL

    Hit Publish and copy the public image URL. The deadline lives in the URL as a parameter, so the same link works for every campaign — change the date, not the link.

    https://tikio.io/e/a1b2.gif?target=2026-08-01T20:00

  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.

    <img src="https://tikio.io/e/a1b2.gif?target={{deadline}}" alt="Offer ends soon" width="480" style="max-width:100%;" />

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.

<img src="https://tikio.io/e/a1b2.gif?duration=86400&uid={{userId}}" alt="Offer ends soon" width="480" style="max-width:100%;" />

FAQ

Does this work with SendBulkTemplatedEmail?

Yes. Put the replacement variables in the URL and supply per-destination template data — each recipient gets their own deadline and key from a single API 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.

Your first countdown is minutes away

Free during early access — no credit card required.

Create your free countdown
Other platforms