We've been waiting a long time to write this intro…

Why? Well, it’s because today's guest is writing to you from (practically) our own backyard.

Most of the friends who've graced this space write to us from the US, the UK and Europe (and we adore every single one of them). But email in South Africa? It's a pretty lonely corner of the industry.

There aren't many of us, and the few who are here don't often compare notes.

So when Ilana van Rooyen reached out, we didn't need to think twice.

Like most of us, Ilana fell into email by accident (nobody grows up wanting to be an email marketer, right?). She started in design, moved into marketing on a loyalty programme, and spent years mapping customer journeys across email, SMS, and WhatsApp, picking up deliverability and segmentation along the way.

From there it was agency life, juggling multiple accounts at once, until a former client asked her to bring that thinking in-house. Today she leads email at the Edinburgh Natural Skincare Company, sending to customers across the USA, Canada, the UK and beyond.

And she's on a mission we share wholeheartedly: helping shape the South African email space into a seriously good (and seriously competitive) one. Together.

Today, she's tackling the part of your email you've probably copy-pasted for years without so much as a second glance…

So, before you scroll to the bottom of your next send, read this. Oh, and if you’ve got podophobia, this email mentions feet…just sayin’ 👀

Yep. That was probably your reaction to the title of this week's guest newsletter, and that reaction is actually kind of why I chose this topic.

The footer is the afterthought of every email that gets sent. We obsess over the hero image, testing every last detail for a decent amount of positive engagement, and then drag in the same footer we've been using for years without so much as a second glance.

Which is a shame, really.

It's the one part of our emails that, done well, does real work on trust consistently. And trust is what keeps people around.

There are three things a good footer has to do: keep you legal, assist in protecting deliverability and make you a company, not just an offer (my favourite part).

I feel it's essential to cover the first two, but I'll spend most of my time on the third since most email marketers already have the legal and deliverability side down.

Let’s start off on the right foot here, I say 😏

Some of the most expensive failures in email actually happen in the footer.

CAN-SPAM, for example, can fine you up to $53,088 per email. Not campaign… per email.

To give you an example of this in play, in 2024, Verkada, a US security firm, was found to have violated the CAN-SPAM Act. Among other things, it sent advertising emails without an unsubscribe option and left out a valid physical address. The penalty was $2.95 million.

It’s one example amongst many, but that can be crippling…

And it's a brutal reminder that we should know what the legal requirements are, and we should check periodically that they're actually in place.

In email, we constantly send across a lot of borders. At Edinburgh Natural Skincare Company, for instance, most of our volumes go to the USA, Canada and the UK, with the rest scattered across Europe and beyond.

That means our footer has to satisfy several different legal requirements at once, and we're hardly the only company in that position. The good news is that they share similarities, so our footers can still look pretty without being a wall of legal text. Small things can make us happy.

The biggest players are CAN-SPAM (USA), GDPR and PECR (UK and EU), CASL (Canada), and the Spam Act 2003 (Australia).

You almost certainly know what's coming next already, but read it anyway. It's always good to do a check now and then on whether you're still compliant.

And, for that sanity check you’re about to do, from a best-practice perspective, footers need to contain the following to adhere to the wide variety of laws:

Once you have all of this in place, you should be actively ensuring your deliverability stays good too, which is the next key element of a good footer.

Deliverability relies not just on the technical bits, but also on trust. Trust with the person you are sending the message to, and trust with the mailbox providers delivering that message.

The footer's role here looks small, but get it wrong, and you could be fined and lose sender reputation.

A footer's main job is to intercept the person who wants out, so they don't reach for spam. Every customer knows the unsubscribe lives at the bottom (although these days it conveniently lives at the top too, thanks to most ESPs!), so folks tend to head there first.

If the unsubscribe isn't in the footer, or isn't obvious, they aren't going to give up. They will report you instead…and that’s not good for anyone.

Think of it this way: an unsubscribe costs you one address. A complaint costs you sender reputation, which could cost you inbox placement to everyone else.

An added technique for lowering complaints that can live in the footer is a permission reminder. A single line confirming why this email is landing in their inbox, ideally naming where and when they signed up.

A permission reminder intercepts the customer who doesn't recognise you (people have short memories), and it also lowers the odds of a complaint.

Then there's a sneakier risk: everything above only really works if people can actually see it, so three things routinely make footers invisible:

Checking the footer on each send only takes a second, and it’s tempting to skip it, but you might want to stop, because like anything in email, stuff breaks over time

Right. We're done marching through all the technical stuff. Here comes the real fun.

Footers can also add additional value to your email repeatedly, and that’s something you can't really do anywhere else in your emails.

I spend a lot of time looking at what other companies do with their email. Partly to check if we're holding our own, but mostly for inspiration.

I'll often spend time looking at the footers of those emails too. They'll always tell me how well a brand actually knows the effect of their email marketing.

To me, a footer is the only part of your email that isn't asking for something. Everything above the footer is your promise. The footer is where you back it up.

The footer can be used to remove the reason not to buy after you've worked so hard to get it.

You could, for example, consistently feature the objections your customer hasn't voiced out loud yet, every time a message goes out.

You can also add information about warranties, reviews, awards, post-purchase processes, guarantees, return windows or even payment security…and for newsletters, it’s where you can seed in those evergreen offers.

This is the only place you can feature these claims without them becoming the main message of your email every time.

Put it in the hero, and it's the campaign content. Put it in the footer, and it becomes a part of your brand.

One of my favourite uses of this space is reviews. In our emails, we've recently started running a 'review of the week', swapped out every week for one we've recently received and liked. It signals the business is active and people are continuously buying, and I love it because it breaks the assumption that a footer is static and irrelevant.

And that's a great thing footers can contribute to: information relevancy. Add in-store events, upcoming launch sign-ups, app download links, or seasonal notices.

You could also use the space in your footer to add additional reachability, like a direct link to contact you or even additional avenues through which they can do so.

I've seen companies add customer service hours to their footers, preventing possible frustration over an unanswered message. The kind of frustration that usually causes churn.

If the brand has physical shops, the footer is a good place to create awareness of them.

If someone scrolled past everything you were selling, you can reasonably assume they didn't want today's offer… but can you assume they're done engaging with the brand?

Adding stuff like navigation blocks, order tracking links, loyalty programme details or even subscription management options can further engage your customers and readers. You can show or hide the last two conditionally, depending on the customer's subscription status or points balance, which feeds straight back into the relevance we already talked about.

At Edinburgh Natural Skincare Company, our main navigation sits at the top of our emails. We've run the tests, and that's where it performs best for us. But in sends segmented towards newer customers, we always include an About Us link in the footer too, and heatmaps show it's frequently the most clicked element down there.

Be careful, though. Just like all other elements in our emails, footer click data can be noisy.

Then, the obvious one: extend beyond just email. Anyone who has looked at cross-channel data knows customers don't just engage with a brand on one channel alone, and the footer is where you invite them into the others, like your socials and SMS lists.

SMS sign-ups have become a common element I've seen in footers, and it's one I really like. SMS tends to be a strong converter for ecommerce brands, so it's an essential avenue to build, and what better place than in the footer?

But remember, sometimes people need a reason to do what we ask of them.

One of my favourite brands to follow for quirky and creative email marketing injections is Yetch Studios. They include the title "Follow us. If you join, all the cool people will finally be there" above their social icons.

I've seen a refreshing trend of brands showing visuals of their recent social posts too. But even a simple line saying what's actually happening on these channels would serve as a reason to join.

Finally, and related to the example I used from Yetch Studios, your footer will probably be the most repeated copy you own in your email, and repetition is what builds brand identity. Match the copy down there to your brand voice, because it doesn't need to be a wall of legal text.

With all of this said, there is a popular Afrikaans saying that goes, "matigheid voor oë", which means to keep moderation in mind.

Every element you add costs you code weight, and code weight clips messages. There’s also visual noise, and because there’s so much of that all over the internet, be strategic but sparing in your approach.

Pick the handful that truly impacts the business and its needs, and let the rest go.

Here's what I'd actually love you to do now.

Go and open the top five emails in whichever inbox you use for following other brands (IYKYK). Scroll straight past the thing they're selling and read the bottom.

What have they included? What have they left out? Is there something there that makes you trust them a little more, removes a potential objection, answers a question, or gives you somewhere else you'd likely want to go?

Every so often you'll find one that's clearly had somebody thinking about the value a footer can add to an email. Those are the ones I am hoping will inspire you.

Oh, and before you go!

If you find a footer worth talking about (or you want to chat about your own), come find me on LinkedIn. I'd love to see what you dig up.

Until next time,

Ilana 👋

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