What to Include in Your Email Marketing Footers

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 at 5:54 pm

Email marketing footers are that part of marketing email that is sent out in bulk which is probably the least read part of the email. This is true of most documentation that one has to deal with in a lifetime and is known with the more popular phrase, fine print. In this form of internet marketing, footers are the place where some of the most important information is actually placed. This pertains specifically to information like the opt-in details, the subscription modification, the opt-out, and the customer service information; it takes all of these to make a really successful footer.

The opt-in details are usually a good thing to add into an email because there is the vague chances that most people will not remember when, or why, they opted-in in the first place; sometimes, people don’t even remember which website they subscribed on in the first place. In this case, it makes sense to add some of the information about the opt-in like the name of your company, the date and time that the person opted-in on, and how long the subscription is going to last. The expiration date of an opt-in is crucial from two perspectives. If a customer is not a convertible customer, then you are better off without this kind of a prospect in your database and if this prospect doesn’t want to be on your list then further mails from you could cause spam complaints.

Editing a subscription is a really useful tool that is used in news alerts that can be of immense help to email marketing mails as well. Here, a subscriber can modify the frequency and type of alerts from the sender after clicking on a link to modify the page at your website. This is a good practice because it gives a level of control to the recipient over the mailing process, which would otherwise only be in the form of an unsubscribe link. This means that your site needs to have a good back end to support this kind of functionality as well.

The final piece of the puzzle comes in the form of the unsubscribe link also known as the opt-out. Again, this is important not just from the perspective of a clean database but also when you consider the fact that it is a mandate from nearly every government that has an anti-spam law. Even some of your most loyal customers will reach a point where transacting might become difficult and you would have invested more money into trying to advertise to them than they would ever spend on you in the future. There is little more to do in this situation but to allow this user to opt-out.

Other types of information that you should use in an email marketing footer include your company information and any customer service or direct contact information. It is also important to state whether replying to the mail sent will actually elicit any kind of response.

Jamie Colbs is a html email newsletter templates best practices activist advocate for Benchmark Email , a leading Web and permission-based email marketing service.

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