Getting Started with EntreTimer

The 3 Timer Functions

Before we create anything, you should understand the 3 things we can actually do with EntreTimer. 

How to Create a New Campaign (Timer)

Creating your timers is easy with the design wizard. 

To get started, click on the “Create campaign” menu item in the left side.

There are 4 steps. 

• Box settings
• Counter settings
• Button Settings 
• Text Settings 

Let's go through each element of the process.

Box Settings

#1 Your design - As you make adjustments, this will adjust accordingly.  

#2 Campaign Title - Make a name for your campaign. Only you will see this. 

#3 Box Style - Choose how your timer will display if you use the embed option. You can choose for it to float on top, on the bottom or inline with your content. If you need an email countdown only, you can ignore this and just choose any of the three options. 

The creation process of a new campaign is based on a wizard to make it even easier and includes a live preview so you can see your work as you proceed. 

The first page in the wizard is the “Box settings”, you can see it in the top of the wizard.

The first field in here is the “Campaign title”, this field is used only internally so you can make a difference between your campaigns.

The second field is the “Box style”. You can either choose to have a floating box in the top or bottom of your page, or to have a box displayed anywhere inside your page. If you select “Boxed div” then some of the fields will disappear.

The next field is the “Background color” where you can define the color of your floating or your boxed div. the field besides is the “Vertical padding” where you can change the vertical spacing of your div.

If you selected the “Float on top” or “Float on bottom” options in the “Box style” field, then you have two fields: Short URL and Iframe URL.

First of all let me explain that this app can work in two different ways.

1. The countdown box can be displayed over any custom website even one that you don’t own,
2. ...or can be displayed using an embed code in any of your sites.

The “Boxed div” style which can be selected in the “Box style” field, can be displayed only by an embed code.

If you would like to display it over any custom URL than filling the “Short URL” and “Iframe URL” fields is mandatory. The short URL value will be the unique path to your campaign.

You can enter any custom keyword in this field.

This value must be unique in the app so after filling the field, click on “Check” besides it. This will verify the uniqueness of your short URL.

Fill the Iframe URL with the URL of the page over which you would like to display your countdown.

The next field is the “Head include” field.

You can use here any custom tracking script or CSS, even a Facebook retargeting pixel, this script will run each time your short URL is visited.

Displayed using an embed code

If you would like to use an embed code to display it in your own site, then leave the “Short URL” and “Iframe URL” field’s blank.

The next field is the “Border size”. You can define a border for your box, leaving it on “0” will not display any border. If you don’t want to display a border, then you can leave the next three fields as they are, or if you want a border then use these fields to customize your border the name of the fields is self explanatory.

When you are ready with filling these fields, you can click on “Next” in the bottom right corner, which will take you to the “Counter settings” page.

The first field is “Countdown Type”, if you want to use a regular countdown then select “Fixed countdown”, selecting this option will show the “Countdown date” field.

Clicking this field will bring up a date/time picker. Select the date to which you would like to count down to.

If you select “Evergreen countdown” then 4 new fields will appear for days, hours, minutes and seconds.

The evergreen timers are based on server time to, but it is per user and it is based on cookies:

For example: if you set up n evergreen countdown for 1 hour, if someone visits your campaign and stays on your page for 10 minutes then leaves your campaign’s page and comes back after 10 minutes, his countdown will continue from 40 minutes left. As soon as the deadline will be meet, your selected action will be executed. If anyone else visits your campaign they will see the same, starting again from 1 hours for each person separately.

• The “Panel radius” field is used to define a rounded corner for the panels of the countdown widget. 
• The “Background color” field controls the color of the countdown panels
• The “Font color” field controls the text color in the countdown panels.
• The “Label color” field controls the color of the label texts in the countdown panels (days, hours, minutes, seconds).
• The “Separator color” field controls the “:” separator’s color between the countdown panels.

Using the “Countdown event” field, you can define what happens when the countdown reaches zero. This action is available LIVE when it happens and someone is just then on your page or after the countdown hits zero and someone lands on your page after that.

If you select “Display expiry message and swap link” then two new fields will be available in the two last steps of the wizard. This action basically will replace the text in the center of your box and change the link on your action button. For example if you are using the app to serve a timed special discount for your sell, you can use this action type t display a message that the offer is expired and he can still buy on full price, and swap the link in your button to the full priced product.

Selecting “Hide bar” will completely hide the countdown box when the timer hits zero.

Selecting “Redirect” will make the “Redirect URL” field available besides it and you can enter a custom URL to redirect the user to when the counter hits zero.

When you're ready with filling these fields, you can click on “Next” in the bottom right corner, which will take you to the “Button settings” page.

The top part of this page is self explanatory, you can define and fine tune the look of your button as you would like. Every aspect of the button is custom.

The changes you make are reflected in the top preview instantly so you can preview your button as you go. The “Expiry URL” field is available ONLY if you selected “Display expiry message and swap link” in the previous step of your wizard. Here you can define another target URL for your button. This will be shown when the counter hits zero.

Every field is self explanatory so I’m not going to explain them one by one, play with the settings and when you are happy with the result, you can click on the “Next” button in the bottom left corner, which will take you to the last step of the wizard, the “Text settings” page.

The top box is the “Active text” field. Text entered here will be displayed in the center of your countdown box. The changes are shown live in the top size preview. You can style your text to fit your needs, you can even use HTML or images but even videos to if you would like. 

The “Expiry text” field is displayed ONLY if you have selected the “Display expiry message and swap link” in the second step of the wizard. This text will be displayed after the counter hits zero.

If you are happy with your edits you can click on “Finish” in the bottom left corner, but you can also go back to make any change you would like. You can also use the top navigation to navigate back to a previous step in the wizard.

The Dashboard

Now as you have your first or multiple campaigns, we can showcase the dashboard. This page offers you access to all of your campaigns, you can manage them from here but also see them in an overview if they are expired or not, how many times it was visited, etc.

The first column in your dashboard able is the “Created” column. This column shows only the creation date of your campaign, and your campaigns are ordered from the newest to the latest.

The second column is the “Title” column which displays the title of your campaign. You can make a difference really easy between your campaigns checking this column. 

The “Hits” column displays the number of visits a campaign receiver. This is available ONLY if you are running an iframe campaign where you are displaying your countdown box over an external URL. If the content of the area is light blue, then you can click on it and will show detailed statistics about your campaign.

The fourth column is “Status” which shows if your countdown date was reached in the specific campaign. Moving your mouse over it, will show a tooltip with the time left or the time since the campaign expired.

The fifth column is “Action”, this shows to you what action is performed when the countdown hits zero in the specific campaign.

The last column is the “Manage”, which is the most important column probably since from here you can manage your campaigns:

The first button is the “Edit” which if is clicked obviously takes you to the same wizard based page as the campaign creation process and lets you edit your campaign.

The “Clone” button will clone your campaign and create a new campaign with the same settings as the cloned campaign. Really useful if you are planning to create a similar campaign to one you already have. 

The email button allows you to use your countdown in an email for example since will be displayed as a moving GIF image. Let’s explain this function on the end of this manual.

Clicking the “Embed” button will copy the embed code to your dashboard so you can paste it into your websites source code. The embed code is available for all campaigns, including the ones that are set to display it over an external custom website. You can still use this campaign in your own pages with the same settings. 

The “Link” button is only available for the campaigns which are set to be displayed over an external custom website. Clicking it, will copy your custom short URL to your dashboard and you can use it right away.

The “Delete” button will allow you to completely delete your campaign and any data related to it.

The email countdown

To generate a countdown for your email campaigns is really easy. Just click the “Email” button on your dashboard for your campaign. The countdown generated here will use the same date to count down to as your main campaign. As you click on the “Email” button a new overlay will come up and you can generate your countdown with a few clicks on the fly.

The first field in the overlay is “Countdown template”, you can select here to use one of the 18 built in templates for your countdown, or selecting “Create custom template” will bring up a new set of fields which allows you to generate your own template for your countdown.

If you are using the built in templates, just click on the template which you would like to use and a red border will appear around your selected image.

If you are generating a new template then the built in template selector will be hidden and a new set of fields will come up with predefined values. Also a live preview will be shown of the current template you have:

The first four fields are self explanatory. And all these fields have color pickers, so if you click on any of them, a color picker will pop up where you can select a custom color value for these fields. The text color will be applied for the label colors below the countdown, for the separator colors between the countdown numbers (if turned on) and the countdown color itself.

The “3D effect” field has three values: “No effect”, “Show main effect” and “Flip effect”. These effects if turned on look like these:

The last field is the separator field, which will display a separator between the countdown panels if is turned on. 

Each change you are making it is displayed after a second in the live preview, so you can see how your countdown looks in real-time.

Independent if you are using a built in template or a custom generated one the fields in the bottom of the overlay will stay the same, since using these, you can embed your countdown into your email. 

The first two fields are controlling the size of the countdown. The third field is the “Countdown Seconds”. The value of this field will be the number of seconds the countdown counts down. For example, if it is set to 60 then will count down 60 seconds, and then start again. The countdown time will be the current time, but being basically a gif image, the number of countdown seconds is limited. When the email is opened, the countdown uses the current and real time remaining then count from that time the given number of seconds in the “Countdown Seconds” field.

The “Countdown Image URL” field is the URL of your countdown image. If you are using a HTML builder to build your email address, and you have an “ADD IMAGE” option to include an image into your email, you can use the value of this field as the image URL.

The “Countdown Embed code” contains the full HTML code you need to use to embed your countdown into your email. You can use this embed code if you have a “HTML” code editor in your email builder.

The bottom two buttons are self explanatory; the preview button will open a new window with your countdown image and display it how it will look in your email. The close button closes the email countdown builder overlay.