Personal deadline

Normally a countdown counts down to the same date for everyone. With a personal deadline your email tool fills in a date per recipient in the image: the end of a trial, the expiry date of a discount code, a week after signing up or their birthday every year. Fiig remembers nothing about your recipients: the date is only in the image URL.

How to set it up

1. 1Make sure your email tool has a date field, for example end_date or birthday.
2. 2In Fiig, open your countdown and under Personal deadline turn on A date of their own for each recipient. Choose a fixed date or Every year again.
3. 3Choose your email tool to fill in the merge tag, and replace the field name with yours. With Days added you can, for example, add a week to the sign-up date.
4. 4Under Try a date, type a value the way your email tool fills it in. Fiig shows when the timer would then end. Save and copy the embed code: it contains the merge tag, after ?deadline=.
5. 5Send yourself a test from your own email tool, to a recipient who has the field filled in. A test email from Fiig can't fill in your fields and counts down to the widget's date.

Not every email tool fills in fields inside an image URL, and none promises it in its help. Your test shows whether it works: if the timer counts down to your test recipient's date, you're set.

The merge tag per email tool

Laposta: {{end_date}}. Laposta may write a date out in words, like 13 januari 2027. Fiig reads that too.

MailerLite: {$end_date}. Mind the capitals: the tag must be named exactly like your field.

Mailchimp: *|END_DATE|*. Set your field's date format to DD/MM/YYYY, and a birthday field to DD/MM. Fiig reads 03/05 as 3 May.

Brevo: {{ contact.END_DATE }}.

Enormail: {%end_date%}.

Flexmail: #end_date#.

Klaviyo: {{ person.end_date|format_date_string|date:'Y-m-d' }}. The filter writes the date as 2026-11-03. Use single quotes: double ones break the image's HTML.

ActiveCampaign: %END_DATE%.

Spotler Mail+ and other tools: use the merge tag your tool uses for a field, and check with a test that it's filled in inside the image.

Which dates Fiig reads

Year first (2026-11-03), day first (03-11-2026, 3/11/2026, 3.11.2026) and written out in Dutch or English (3 November 2026, 3 Nov. 2026), with or without a time after it. Day first wins: only when nothing else is possible does Fiig read a date the American way (11/23/2026). A date without a time counts down to the end of that day, or to its start if you choose so. If Fiig can't read the value, or the field is empty, the timer counts down to the widget's date.

Birthdays

With Every year again only the day and month count: a birth date like 14-03-1985 counts down to the next 14 March, at 00:00 in the widget's time zone. A date without a year (14-03, 14 March) works too. On the birthday itself the timer shows your text for that day, like Happy birthday!, and the next day it counts down to next year. Someone born on 29 February gets 28 February in other years.

Recipients without a birth date see your Text without a birth date, never the congratulation. You can also hide the block for them with your email tool's conditional content.

Send a birthday email a week or a few days in advance, for example with an automation in your email tool. Then the timer has something to count down.