We've been working hard over the past few months in order to make Countdown Hero is even better for you and your subscribers, so that you can make more sales for each and every countdown campaign that you run.


Because we're working fast to make these things happen, it can sometimes be easy to miss when a new feature is set live - especially if you're running an evergreen campaign that's working for you in the background of your business!


Rather than include all of the minor (and somewhat unexciting) updates like bug fixes and general performance improvements/ updates - here's a log of some of our more major (and super exciting!) Countdown Hero Updates & New Features.


Here's what's mentioned in this article:


  • IMPORTANT: Updated CDH Link Structure

  • Sales Tracking

  • Kajabi (Psuedo) Integration

  • Countdown Trigger Code

  • Expired Popup


Plus, there's even an exciting new update to one of our other Hero software tools too (and the launch of a brand-new Hero software!)


IMPORTANT: Updated CDH Link Structure


Sometimes it can feel like the tech giants (cough cough - Apple - cough cough), are working hard to make our job of email marketing harder than it needs to be, right?


Well, in an upcoming update to the Apple Mail client, they are going to be stripping away identifiable URL parameters (such as your subscribers email address), out of the links that you're sending to your subscribers.


That means that URL Parameters like this < ?email= > are going to get removed.


(^^ EXAMPLE OF THE OLD LINK STRUCTURE
Contains ?email= UTM parameter)



Previously, this was the main factor behind adding a Countdown Hero into your email links which would mean that for Apple Mail users, your Countdown Hero would stop working.



NOTE: This will only affect the links inside your emails. Any links between multiple webpages containing a Countdown Hero will be unaffected by this update.



^^ With all of that in mind, we've gone ahead to adjust the structure of our Countdown Hero links to protect your countdown campaigns from this Apple update.


Now, your Countdown Hero trigger links and Redirect URL's will append the subscribers email address inside the actual link itself - so that this cannot be removed from your links and your subscribers will still be able to access your countdown pages, as if this update had never happened.


Here's an example of one of these NEW links:


(^^ EXAMPLE OF THE NEW LINK STRUCTURE)


As you can see, the email address will now be merged after the / at the end of that URL.


These updates are now LIVE inside your Countdown Hero account.


  • IMPORTANT ACTION: If you have any evergreen Countdown Hero campaigns using the OLD link structure (using the < ?email= > structure), prioritise replacing these old links with the new links.

    (This includes both the Trigger Links and the Redirect URL's)

    Just copy/paste the new links (found inside your existing Countdown Hero) in place of your old links and you'll be ready to beat the tech giants when they launch these update.

  • IMPORTANT NOTE: Your existing Countdown Hero links (using the ?email= method) are still being fully supported by us here at Countdown Hero for the meantime. These changes have been made in your account now so that these upcoming global changes are being prevented for all future edits of your countdown campaigns.


NEW FEATURE: Countdown Hero Sales Tracking


Let's face it - tracking the sales of your evergreen countdown campaigns can often be tricky. 


From cross-checking data from a bunch of different (and likely expensive!) platforms, to figuring out date ranges and how much your campaigns are actually making you - it's rarely straightforward.


The great news is that with this brand new feature (Sales Tracking) you'll now be able to accurately track EXACTLY how much money each of your Countdown Hero campaigns is making you.


Whenever you set up an evergreen Countdown Hero, you'll see a new tab for 'Sales Tracking' that looks like this;




To use CDH Sales Tracking, just add a Product Name and set up how you're tracking customers of that offer, along with the price of each product and hit Save. 


It's as easy as that.


Now, for every new timer that is triggered for your subscribers, Countdown Hero will automatically check your email platform and track your conversions so that you can view this data in a clear table inside of your Sales Tracking tab and know exactly how much money that Countdown Hero has made for you and your business.


How awesome is that?



NOTE: Due to the nature of this feature, it does require a direct integration with one of our primary integrations. Our Kajabi and 'Other Platform' connections cannot support this feature as we don't have access to your email platform.



This feature is now LIVE inside your Countdown Hero account.


  • IMPORTANT ACTION: Set up your Sales Tracking inside your existing evergreen Countdown Hero campaigns to start collecting this sales data for each and every new timer that gets created for your subscribers.

    (PRO TIP: Make sure to add your full-funnel, from the front-end product, to your bumps and upsells too!)


NEW: Kajabi Pseudo-Integration


We know that Kajabi is a massively popular platform for many course-creators, coaches, membership site owners and beyond.


With a large number of Kajabi users reaching out to us, desperate for us to get Countdown Hero working with Kajabi, we've been working hard to make this possible - though Kajabi aren't budging.


In fact, we've been doing everything we can over the past 18+ months to get convince Kajabi to let us integrate with them but, despite our best efforts, they've not supported on this yet.


Rather than taking 'no' for an answer... we did it anyways!


On your 'Integrations' dashboard, you will now see an option to select Kajabi as your email platform.



IMPORTANT: This is NOT a direct integration.


What this means is that you can now speed up the implementation of each of your Countdown Hero campaigns with our shortcuts and developments to help Kajabi users start making sales using this ethical, evergreen urgency that your timers create for your subscribers.


When you've selected the 'Kajabi' pseudo-integration, we'll automatically prepare your links using the Kajabi personalisation/ merge codes and only display the features that are available to use within the Kajabi platform (rather than overwhelming and/or confusing you with a tonne of features and settings that you can't yet use)


In addition to this, we've also developed a brand-new trigger method (our 'Countdown Trigger Code' method - see below) to help increase the functionality of your Countdown Hero, despite the Kajabi limitations.


Cool, eh? ;-)


  • NOTE: We're going to continue our efforts to create a direct integration with the Kajabi platform, but we've developed this option because we still wanted to make sure that you were taken care of in the meantime.

    Going forwards, any help you can give us, in the form of connections to the higher-up team at Kajabi HQ, or submitting integration feature requests to Kajabi directly would go a long way to helping us make this happen.


NEW FEATURE: Countdown Trigger Code


Based on customer feedback, we noticed that there were a bunch of form builders that weren't able to pass the subscriber's email address through to the ThankYou Page and they weren't able to run promotions including things like tripwire offers or an instant-access webinar replay, for example.


So, rather than leaving you stuck, when you're using our 'Other Platform' integration (and some other specific platforms, such as Kajabi and Kartra), we got to work on a brand-new trigger method.


Now, when using those integrations, you can use our Countdown Trigger Code to start your timers.




Just copy/paste the Countdown Trigger Code (found inside your Trigger Settings tab) onto your opt-in form page and Countdown Hero will now work it's magic.


Adding those means that it will trigger your Countdown Hero, submit the form AND redirect your subscribers to your Default page from your Countdown Hero Page Settings - all at instant-speed.


No more hassle with form builders that have limited functionality.


Using this method, EVERY form is Countdown Hero-able!


NEW FEATURE: Custom Expired Popup


Have you ever clicked a link in your emails, gone to buy the product, but at the last minute you realised that your discount code is no longer value, or that the price has gone back up again?


Well, I have. And it SUCKS.


But it gets even worse than that - because some people don't notice.


Which means that they'll click on a link in an email (after your promotion has closed) and buy your offer at $197, rather than the $97 it was during your flash sale.


That then turns into support tickets and complains for you, which leads to refunds and upset customers - which isn't good for anyone.


The great news is that with this brand-new feature, Custom Expired Popups, you can now design a popup to appear over the top your offer page to explain to your subscribers that your offer has Expired - before redirecting them to your regular Expired Page (or a full price offer instead)




Just enable this feature inside your Page Settings and you'll be able to customise this new popup text, including an automatic countdown before the page redirects too.


Gone are the days of complains, accidental purchases and refunds, thanks to Countdown Hero!

 

This feature is now LIVE inside your Countdown Hero account.


BONUS: Animated Merge Fields (Scarcity Hero)


Whilst Countdown Hero is perfect for creating serious, ethical, evergreen urgency - Scarcity Hero is our powerful tool for building true scarcity in your next promotion.


(NOTE: Scarcity Hero is included as a Bonus for Countdown Hero Lifetime customers!)


Whether you're using the Waitlist feature or just the regular Scarcity Hero, you'll want to make your real-time numbers clear to your subscribers so that the scarcity is at it's strongest.


That's why, in this latest update to Scarcity Hero, we've launched a new feature called, 'Animated Merge Fields'.



^^ With this feature enabled, when these merge tags appear on the screen in your webpage, it will now animate a count up/down to the current number on your waitlist, or number of units remaining (for example).


Now your merge fields will catch your subscribers attention as they pop into view so that you can crank up the dial on your scarcity and drive more action from each of your subscribers.


This feature is now LIVE inside your Scarcity Hero account.


BRAND-NEW HERO: Element Hero


*Exclusively Available For Members of The League and The Email Hero Academy*


For the longest of time, we wanted a button to appear at the right moment beneath our videos so that we could increase consumption of our sales videos and webinar replays (and boost our sales!)


We tried using the in-built 'delay appearance' features inside our page builders, but there were always problems with those and they weren't completely accurate.


Some relied on the amount of time after a page loaded (rather than the exact moment in a sales video), others were ridiculously expensive for what should be a fairly simple task.


And, as we like to do here at Email Marketing Heroes, we got to work on a new solution.


Introducing... ELEMENT HERO!




That's right, we've developed a brand-new software solution that now allows us to effortlessly make page elements appear/disappear based on the time on a page and/or progress through a sales video.


The best part?


It's mind-blowingly EASY to do.


Just copy/paste the Element Hero code, select the elements you want to appear/disappear and set the time you'd like it to happen and BAM! Element Hero will take care of the rest.


(This works great in ANY page builder too!)


  • If you're a member of our membership, The League, or our Email Hero Academy (membership for Email Hero Blueprint customers), you'll have access to this inside your Member AutomateHero account - along with our other software tools too. Just log in using your members area credentials and you'll be good to go! :)

  • If you're not a current member you can click here to find out more about the Email Hero Blueprint.

    (Once you're inside the Blueprint, more details on how to join the membership, The Email Hero Academy, will appear on the very next page, explaining how to unlock our full suite of AutomateHero software tools)