Kit has had a countdown timer of its own for a while now. It sits in the content block menu of broadcasts, sequence emails, forms and landing pages. You set an end date and time, choose Plain, Squared or Rounded, pick your colours, and write a short expiry message that appears over the timer once it hits zero. For a launch broadcast counting to one cart-close moment, that is all a Kit countdown timer needs to be.
Two things about it are worth knowing before you build a sequence around it. It counts to one date for everyone, with no evergreen option. And Kit’s countdown timer documentation notes that duplicating an email shares the timer with the copy, so editing the timer in the duplicate changes the original too. I’ve seen that one bite a launch: someone tweaks the date on a re-send and quietly moves the deadline on the email that already went out.
This guide covers the cases the built-in block doesn’t, with an Alterable countdown timer in the HTML Block.
When Kit’s timer isn’t enough
Kit users live in sequences, and sequences are exactly where a fixed date falls down. Someone who joins your evergreen funnel on Tuesday shouldn’t see a clock that ran out on Monday.
- Sequences with a personal window. “Your bonus expires 72 hours from now” only works if the clock starts for each subscriber individually. An evergreen timer starts from each person’s first open.
- A deadline stored on the subscriber. A cohort start date or a personal offer window in a custom field. A merge tag timer reads it and counts to that date.
- The same timer on the sales page. The Alterable timer is an image URL, so the countdown in the email and the one on the page can be the same clock.
Step 1: Create the timer in Alterable
1. Open the Alterable countdown timer page.
2. Pick Evergreen for a sequence window or Merge tag for a deadline held in a custom field. Standard exists too, though for a fixed date Kit’s own block is simpler.
3. Set the duration or deadline, then match the style to your emails.
4. Click Create and copy the embed, a link wrapped around an image.
Step 2: Add the countdown timer to your Kit email
1. Open the broadcast or sequence email in the editor.
2. Click the + button where the timer should go.
3. Choose HTML Block from the content menu.
4. Click Edit, paste the Alterable embed, and save.
The same editor serves broadcasts, sequences and confirmation emails, and Visual Automations send those, so the block works anywhere an automation can reach. Kit’s guidance on HTML in email rules out scripts, forms and iframes, which email clients block anyway. An image inside a link is fine.
Per-subscriber deadlines with Kit’s Liquid variables
An evergreen timer needs to know who’s opening so it can start and keep that subscriber’s clock. Kit exposes the address as a Liquid variable:
<img src="https://next.alterable.com/countdown-timers/YOUR-TIMER-ID.png?uid={{ subscriber.email_address }}" />A merge tag timer takes the deadline itself. Kit’s custom fields are plain text, and its Liquid date filters only work when the field is stored as yyyy-mm-dd or yyyy-mm-dd HH:MM. Store it that way in a field called, say, offer_end, and the date filter outputs the ISO form the timer expects:
<img src="https://next.alterable.com/countdown-timers/YOUR-TIMER-ID.png?d={{ subscriber.offer_end | date: '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ' }}" />Kit doesn’t document a signup-date variable, so “72 hours from signup” is better handled by an evergreen timer, which needs no field at all.
Previewing a Kit countdown timer
Kit’s ordinary preview and test emails fill Liquid variables with placeholders like [FIRST NAME GOES HERE]. A variable inside an image URL gets the same treatment and the image fails. Use Preview as subscriber, pick a real subscriber, and the URL resolves and the timer draws. Standard timers carry no variables and preview normally.
Once the deadline passes, the timer holds at zero, or shows the text or image you set as its expiry placeholder in Alterable. Change that placeholder later and every email already sitting in an inbox picks it up on the next open, with no duplicated-timer surprises.