How to create the best email footers: tips & examples (Updated)

Email footers: an overlooked boost to your email marketing efforts

When it comes to your business emails, you want to make your Email footer and general design look as professional as possible. You are probably used to the basics: addressing the client’s name, personalizing the content, and signing off by thanking them (see our full list of email sign-offs) and our arsenal of email signature examples.

You may even have a classy signature with tons of contact information added to the end. However, if you’re not utilizing email footers, then you’re missing out on maximizing each email opportunity.

Email footers often get overlooked by the recipient. They’re perceived as “the fine print” that nobody reads or considers when reading an email. However, more often than not, email footers are crucial to growing and they can also protect your business.

There are many different types of email footers you can implement. Some of them will help you market your company, and promote your brand, and some of them are helpful to have in order to make your emails legally compliant.

In this article, we’ll look at why email footers are important for your small business, and what types of email footers you should consider using along with some examples.

Why are email footers so valuable?

Like any piece of content you add to your emails, a footer only helps cement the professionalism of your brand. There’s certain information that seems obvious to include when you sign off on an email, such as your name, contact details, and company address or website. Email footers generally go beyond that point and add more specific information that is helpful to both the recipient and your business.

When it comes to email footers, a little goes a long way in terms of value-added for your client. These short signature disclaimers or additional bits of information can protect your business as well as your client, so adding them to each and every email you send is a no-brainer.

Legal and confidentiality footers

Legal and confidentiality disclaimers are important pieces of information to add to your emails and are typically used to protect the confidentiality of the details in the email as well as the identity of the intended recipient. Imagine you accidentally send an email including billing information to the wrong client. This can land you in legal trouble, however, by adding a confidentiality disclaimer to your email, you’ve added an extra layer of protection to your business.

It might be in your best interest to consult with a lawyer to discuss the exact legal verbiage and information you should include that makes sense for your business.

According to a law firm, this is a good example of a legal disclaimer that can work for your business:

The information transmitted by this email is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed. This email may contain proprietary, business-confidential, and/or privileged material. If you are not the intended recipient of this message, be aware that any use, review, retransmission, distribution, reproduction, or any action taken in reliance upon this message is strictly prohibited. If you received this in error, please contact the sender and delete the material from all computers.

The GDPR disclaimer should be used in the event that you collect any type of customer data that can be interpreted as personal or confidential and that can potentially identify an individual person. Therefore, if your clients ever fill out a web form with details such as their name, address, or email address, this data is considered personal and needs to be protected.

In order to inform your clients that your business is GDPR compliant, the most common way to do so is by adding a disclaimer to each email. You should also be adding the details to your company’s Privacy Policy.

The GDPR email footer might look something like this:

[Company Name] is compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (EU) 2016/679. We are committed to guaranteeing the security and protection of the private information that we process. To understand more about how we collect, store, and process your personal information in compliance with GDPR, please take a look at our privacy policy. 

Security or virus disclaimer

If you usually send a lot of links or attachments in your email, this is an important email footer to include. You don’t want to hold your company liable for any unknown viruses or malware that might be lurking in any of your emails. 

Consider adding a brief email footer that warns the recipient of the (small) but potential threat of viruses being transmitted via email. Consider phrasing it like this:

This email may contain viruses that could infect your computer. We strongly recommend using a malware scanner to check the contents of this email and its attachments, if there are any. Since emails can be lost, intercepted, or corrupted, [name of your company] accepts no liability for damages caused by viruses transmitted via this email.

What are green Email footers?

There was a time when people would print out email messages to serve as reminders or to use in meetings. However, nowadays we tend to print a lot less and it’s not as common for people to print out their emails. 

That being said, adding an environmentally conscious email disclaimer is still a good move. These email footers show your client that you committed to being a more environmentally friendly business, and also serve as a small reminder to help reduce paper consumption for those few people who might still consider printing out an email.

If you don’t want to mention printing emails, there are other ways you can be eco-friendly as well. You can choose to include an environmentally-themed quote in your green email footer or share a short eco-friendly tip.

Unsubscribe footer links

As a business, it’s always a little bit of a heartbreak to see a customer unsubscribe from your mailing list. However, do you know what’s even more frustrating? Searching high and low for an unsubscribe button.

Though you might not like it, adding an unsubscribe form to your emails is crucial. Not only is it helpful for clients who no longer wish to receive your emails, but it is also considered to be important for GDPR compliance.

If you’re sad to see a client go, look at it this way: the recipient who unsubscribed likely already wasn’t interacting much with your emails. Now, you may have one less client on your mailing list, but your mailing list has become more streamlined in that you know that the clients who are receiving your emails truly want to receive them.

An unsubscribe link in your email footer is especially important if you’re sending out newsletters. They’re not always relevant to personal interactions between you and a client.

For example, if you’re contacting a potential client to answer a question about your business’s services, it would be a good idea to add a banner with a CTA that promotes signing up for your service. 

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