1. WHAT SHOULD I INCLUDE IN MY FOOTER?

Contact Information
You should provide your company's physical mailing address (not P.O. Box), telephone number and web address. You may also display this information elsewhere in your newsletter; however, it never hurts to make sure it's all together at the bottom.

Consider customizing the contact information for different audiences. By creating custom footers, you could include more specific information based on your audiences' specific needs. For example, you could provide human resources contact information and links to related web pages in an employees newsletter. For a retail newsletter, you could provide customer service numbers and hyperlinks.

A Way for Subscribers to Update Their Information
Always give your readers the opportunity to update their subscription preferences, such as name or e-mail address changes. This allows subscribers to easily provide you with updated contact information so that you can accurately send and personalize e-mails.

A Way for Subscribers to Opt Off Your List
You must provide subscribers with a way to opt off of your list in order to comply with Federal spam laws. This could be an "unsubscribe" link or some other mechanism, but you must remove the subscriber within 10 business days of the request.

Reason the Subscriber Is Receiving the Message
Remind your subscribers how and when they gave you permission to add them to your newsletter list. For example, you might say:

You received this newsletter because you signed up on our website at www.yourdomain.com.

Subscription History
It's a best practice to provide readers with information about their subscription history. The "view source info" custom link in eMS gives individual subscribers their specific opt-in information, a history of any changes they have made to their preferences and your organization's contact information in case they have questions. This digital footprint provides transparent information to your subscribers and protects you when there are spam complaints.

Privacy Statement
Provide a statement assuring your readers that you will not share their information. Then, do not share their information! You should also include a link to your full online privacy statement.

Trademark or Copyright Statement
A growing number of companies are including trademark and copyright information in their footers. Ask your legal counsel if you should, too.

2. WHAT SHOULDN'T BE IN MY FOOTER?

Certain footer statements, while they may be well-intended, could actually increase your chances of being filtered as spam or encourage readers to hit their own spam buttons instead of opting out. This is because they are commonly used by spammers. Here are a few examples that we found on www.clickz.com.

• Statement saying how you comply with CAN-SPAM.
• A message stating that your newsletter isn't spam.
• A message stating that the newsletter is never “unsolicited.”
• A message stating that readers cannot respond.

3. HOW WE MAKE FOOTERS EASY FOR YOU!

For Katey Charles Communications clients, it's easy to create a custom footer in your eMS account, one that keeps you in compliance with Federal spam laws and in good standing with your readers. Start with the default footer under Messaging/Message Footer, and just edit from there. Add your address, telephone number, web address, critical links, etc. There are custom links already set up in eMS that you can use to link subscribers to their subscription history (custom link: Subscriber Source Info) or to the form where they can opt out or change their preferences (custom link: Opt Out). Yes, the “Opt Out” custom link can be used for updating preferences and unsubscribing, because it links a subscriber to a form pre-filled with their data and a checkbox for unsubscribing.

If you'd like help creating your footers, please contact Katey Charles Communications.

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Was this article helpful to you? Please send your feedback or suggestions to me at goodthinking@kateycharles.com.