AWtomator Link Events create email links which can be set to expire at a fixed time, or relative to the date the email is sent.
This means as well as one-off offers, you can also create evergreen time limited launches and offers that have genuine scarcity, without having to swap out links or pages once they’ve expired.
When the link expires, you can redirect subscribers to another URL – perhaps a “sorry you missed out” page, or another offer.
Here’s what the Link Event Expiry settings look like:
Setting A Fixed Expiry Time
You can use a fixed time expiry for one-off offers that must end at the same time for all subscribers, regardless of when emails were sent out.
AWtomator stores fixed expiry times as “YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS UTC”, but you can use most recognised date/time formats, and even a relative date format to set the date/time.
For example:
- 2017-01-12 23:59:59
- 18th March 2017
- March 2017
- 21 Jan 2017
- midnight friday EST
- last sat of July 2017 16:00:00 EST
If AWtomator can’t work out the date you entered for any reason, you’ll see an error displayed when you hit the “Next” button
Dates are stored and displayed in “YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS UTC” format, so be aware the date will look different if you specified a timezone.
For example, 2017-01-12 23:59:59 EST will be stored and displayed as 2017-01-13 04:59:59 UTC as EST is 5 hours behind UTC (UTC-5).
Setting A Relative (Evergreen) Expiry Time
This is where the expiry date is set per subscriber, relative to the date of the email in which they first clicked the link. You can use a relative time in evergreen offers to give each subscriber the same period of time to respond, regardless of when they get the email.
As above, you can use a variety of relative date/time formats to set the expiry time.
For example:
- +5 hours
- next friday
- tomorrow midnight EST
- 7 days
- midnight friday EST
- last sat of July 2017 16:00:00 EST
If AWtomator can’t work out the date you entered for any reason, you’ll see an error displayed when you hit the “Next” button.
- You can use any PHP relative date format to set your relative date.
- When using more complicated relative dates (e.g. “Monday next week 9pm PDT”), you can test it by first saving the event with the “fixed time” radio button selected, then editing the event again to see what fixed date was set. If it’s what you expected, then you can re-enter and save as a relative time.
- AWeber only passes the date of the email (not the time), so if your relative expiry time is less than 1 day, the link will expire relative to that time if it is clicked, or at midnight that day if it is not.
Advanced: Re-using Relative Expiry Links
Links with relative expiry dates use the AWeber “{!date ed+0}” personalisation variable to supply AWtomator with the date of the email.
So, if you have a series of reminder emails that countdown to a relative expiry date, you can use the SAME link event in all the emails PROVIDING you tweak the personalisation variable to keep the date consistent across all the emails.
For example, let’s say you have a 4 day countdown sequence. You would tweak the link event each day like so:
Day 1: http://www.awtomator.com/c/abc123&e={!email}&d={!date ed+0}
Day 2: http://www.awtomator.com/c/abc123&e={!email}&d={!date ed-1}
Day 3: http://www.awtomator.com/c/abc123&e={!email}&d={!date ed-2}
Day 4: http://www.awtomator.com/c/abc123&e={!email}&d={!date ed-3}
This way, every link in every email will report the same date as Day 1, and it won’t matter which email the subscriber clicks a link in first.
Try It Yourself
Enter your email below to get an email with an expiring link in it so you can try this out for yourself.
