Tip of the week 82 - Tips to craft an informative email footer

An email footer is an essential part of any email campaign as it is here people scroll down to for important information about the sender.

An email footer, located at the bottom of an email, includes information about the sender/brand, links to manage subscription, forward the email options and sometimes even leads to social media pages.

Let's have a look at the information that we should include in an email footer.

Contact information

A footer must have your contact information, not just the contact email address but also your mailing address. This is to build trust. You can also include a link back to your site or a linked logo or a specific page. This gives readers a way to get more information about you.

An easy way to unsubscribe

An unsubscribe link is the most important part of the footer as it allows the users to discontinue their subscription when they don’t want to receive any more emails from you. It not only affects your email deliverability but is also required by many spam laws around the world.

No one wants subscribers to opt out of the mailing list, but it’s more beneficial than you may think.

Sometimes, your email content may not resonate with your subscribers and that's when they'd want to unsubscribe. If they struggle to find the unsubscribe link they may just mark you as spam and that's worse than being unsubscribed.

Clear positioning of sender's contact information and 'Unsubscribe' link

Social media buttons

Footer can be an ideal placement for social media buttons. The fact that it is placed away from the content and the main CTA, it becomes a convenient spot to promote the platforms that are most important to your brand.

Smart placement of company logo and social media pages in the email footer

Additional links and information

Other links such as 'forward to a friend' or 'update profile' can also be included.

Here, subscribers can update their information such as company, mailing address, phone number, subscriptions and other information.

You can also let your subscribers know, in a sentence, why they are part of that specific email list in the footer.

Give your subscribers an option to update their profile

Footer design tips

With all the information, footers run risk of getting cluttered. Before designing the footer, decide the to include only that information that makes the most sense.
In order to separate the footer from the body, you can opt for a different colour for the footer.
Take the space you need to. Divide your footer in to sections to make it readable. While there is no rule of thumb when it comes to footer size, design it in a away that it complements your email design.