Anatomy of a Good, Healthy HTML Email Newsletter

Your company name in the “From.” Recipients should recognize who the email is
from instantly. It can’t be deceptive in any way (duh). If a recipient has to strain
his brain to remember who you are, he’ll click “this is spam” instead of opening.
2. A relevant subject line (don’t be “spammy”), with your company or newsletter
name in it. So they instantly know who the email is from, and what it’s about
(hence, “subject” line).
3. The “To:” field of your email should be personalized to the recipient’s name, not
their email address. MailChimp lets you “merge” recipient names into this field, if
you have it in your database. You would insert *|FNAME|* *|LNAME|*, for example. Search our help documents for “merge tags” if you want detailed
instructions.
4. A one-click opt-out link that removes people from your list immediately.
Consider placing it at the top of your email (as well as in the footer), so that
people who want off your list can find it really easy (instead of clicking their
“Junk” button). If you use MailChimp’s Managed List functionality, you would use
our *|UNSUB|* tag to generate your unsubscribe link (it’s required in every email
you send from our system). Any recipient who clicks it will be instantly removed
from your list. If you use our built-in HTML email templates, we insert that link
into the footer for you (no coding required).
5. In addition to your opt-out link, you might also include a link in your header for
recipients to “view this email in your browser.” Point it to an archived version of
your email on your server. This helps if the email got forwarded to friends, and
then got mangled along the way. MailChimp automatically keeps an archived
version of all your campaigns on our server. You can just use our *|ARCHIVE|* tag
in your emails to link to yours. If you use our built-in HTML email templates, we
automatically place this link at the top of all your emails.
6. A link to your company’s privacy policy should be in your email. If you don’t have
a privacy policy, you can use the DMA’s privacy policy generator. Google the
phrase, “DMA privacy policy generator”
7. Your valid, physical mailing address (P.O. Boxes aren’t good enough), and as
much contact information as possible. The more contact information you
provide, the more reputable your email will look.
8. Bonus: It’s a really good idea to also include some kind of reminder text, like
“You are receiving this email because you signed up at our website.” People
forget opting-in to lists, and they get a little trigger-happy with the “this is spam”
button. That can get you reported to the major ISPs, so you want to prevent that
as much as possible. Also, in the rare case that a recipient reports you to an antispam
organization, having this reminder text can make the difference between a
server admin blacklisting you forever, or contacting you for further explanation.
If you use our built-in email templates, MailChimp inserts that reminder text into
your email footer automatically.