Email guide

How to add a countdown timer to SendGrid

Whether you send with SendGrid Marketing Campaigns or transactional dynamic templates, a tikio countdown is one image URL. Handlebars substitutions work inside the URL, so both fixed and per-recipient deadlines are covered.

Create your free countdown Jump to steps

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
Insert the timer into your SendGrid email

In the Marketing Campaigns design editor, drag in a Code module and paste the snippet below. In dynamic templates, add the <img> tag straight into your HTML — substitutions in the URL are resolved per recipient at send time.
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

For per-recipient evergreen deadlines, pass a recipient identifier such as {{contact_id}} as the uid. Each recipient’s countdown starts at their first open — useful for time-limited offers in automations and transactional sends alike.

HTML

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

FAQ

Questions, answered

Does this work in transactional emails too?

Yes — the timer is a plain image URL, so it works in dynamic templates and any transactional send. Per-recipient evergreen is especially handy there, since every send happens at a different moment.

Can I set the deadline per send via substitution data?

Yes, with a link created through the REST API whose deadline comes from the recipient: put a Handlebars variable in target= and supply an ISO date with a timezone offset or unix seconds in your substitution data — one template, any deadline.

Is there anything to install?

No. No SendGrid add-ons, no scripts — just an image tag.

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