Don’t Forget About E-Zine Footers
The footer, the text that appears beneath the actual newsletter content, is the best place for administrative messaging and CAN-SPAM compliance, but it also offers a great opportunity to continue to sell your products and services and to reinforce your branding. Too many marketers waste this opportunity. While this text is not a guaranteed read every time, many readers do scroll down for more information. Also, people who get an e-mail forwarded to them will instinctively look to the bottom of the e-mail to find out who sent it originally.
This is why standard information about your business, typically called a boilerplate, should always be included. And we’d be remiss if we didn’t encourage you to use this space to drive some of your long-term marketing objectives by highlighting products on the horizon, or secondary offers. Be sure to include all of your key company information, including contacts, links to press releases and to your Web site and of course promotions of your other newsletters.
It should go without saying—but we’ll say it anyway—that your footer must include all the legal bits required by CAN-SPAM, including unsubscribe instructions and a postal address. And while Can-Spam requires a postal address, we say be brace and include a phone number, too. You’ll be surprised that will increase credibility rather than complaints.
Unlike the header and content, the footer copy does not carry the same mandate of brevity. Readers do not perceive this as part of the newsletter, so you can spread it out a little more.
Some of the elements we commend including in the footer:
*An “about this newsletter” section
*An “About the company” section, with links back to the site
*Viral elements, including subscription forms and tell-a-friend froms
*Administrative elements, such as copyright and contact info
*A privacy policy mention or link
*Promotions for your other e-mail newsletters
*Links to special features on your Web site
*Subscribe, unsubscribe and account-modification links
*A teaser about content in your next newsletter
*A customer feedback link, of course
Matt Blumberg and Michael Mayor are the driving forces behind Return Path, an e-mail performance company. Collaborating with them on this project are their colleagues, e-mail strategists Stephanie A. Miller and Tami Monahan Forman. This article was excerpted from their new book, “Sign Me Up! A Marketer’s Guide to Creating E-mail Newsletters That Build Relationships and Boost Sales (iUniverse Inc., 2005) © 2005 Return Path, Inc. All rights reserved.
