By You often see countdown images on sites such as Amazon, TigerDirect and other eCommerce websites as a means to increase the pressure to act today, and not tomorrow (or never).
Marketers use such images and timers in flash sales and traditionally in their Christmas communication. Typically, around Christmas you see messages like “X days left until Xmas” or “Y days left until the last order date for punctual delivery”. These messages are normally written in Flash/JavaScript by a programmer or the static image is updated every single day. Both of these options are cumbersome and neither work in an email newsletter.
Below are two common scenarios that are ideal for Countdown NiftyImages.
Static Dates
Static dates include holidays (Christmas, Thanks Giving, New Years, etc…) and other proprietary events like a big sale, opening day, event registration, etc…
In these scenarios you would want to use the Target Date. The Target Date is used to calculate how many days left or which image to use if you specified more than one.
Example: Christmas Countdown NiftyImage.
First we select a picture from our Image Library, in this case we are choosing:
Next we’ll configure the location and look of our font.
The # sign will be replaced with the number of days left until the Target Date (or show a different image as explained below):
After selecting the appropriate Target Date (12/25/2015), we’re done.
click thumbnail to enlarge
If you put the image URL in your website or email campaign you will get a new image every day:
……………… 
Live Example: http://img1.niftyimages.com/h/tpo/2po
Now this is great, but there’s more. Next we are going to make the image more intelligent by supplying images for the three other options you probably saw in the screenshot above.
One Day Left is the image that is displayed when the Target Date is tomorrow (Christmas Eve).
Day Of is the image that is displayed on the same day as the Target Date (Christmas Day).
In The Past is the image that will be displayed after the Target Date has passed (After the 25th of December).
Now your NiftyImage now looks like this:
click thumbnail to enlarge
End result for the recipient/viewer:
Dynamic Dates
Dynamic dates are used when the Target Date is custom depending on the email recipient or website visitor. Using dynamic dates you can send out the same message to each of your subscribers and they would all see a separate image depending on their: credit card expiration date, days left until their account expires, etc…
Below is a simple Countdown NiftyImage. I just want to illustrate how you provide a dynamic date from the URL.
Lets assume our NiftyImage looks like this:
We can present the same image URL to multiple different subscribers/members and provide a dynamic Target Date.
Here are a couple examples:
http://img1.niftyimages.com/h/2po/xfo?date=12/17/2015
http://img1.niftyimages.com/h/2po/xfo?date=01/15/2016
Take note that the end of each URL above has a date specified. Any date that is provided in the URL becomes the new Target Date, calculations are done from there.
You can still use the One Day Left, Day Of and In The Past images; they work the same. See our post about adding variables to your NiftyImages using your Email Service Provider.