When you’re designing an email campaign your first thoughts probably turn to the look and content. One thing that we speak to clients about A LOT is the importance of the Permission Reminder. The Permission Reminder is a small amount of text, separate from the main content, that’s used to indicate to the reader why they are receiving your email.

It’s critical to get this part right because a recipient who doesn’t recognise your company or can’t recall opting in to your mailing list could report your email as spam, which can get you blacklisted as a spammer (the worst outcome possible!). If you’re using a third-party email service – such as MailChimp or Campaign Monitor – your account could be blocked you if the ‘spam reports count is too high; usually above 0.5%.

Start with a high quality mailing list.  It is hard to develop an opt-in list but this should be the long-term aim. It’s usually safe to email people if they have interacted with you in the past year but better still if they have fully opted-in (more on how to do this on another post).

Also, clean-up your lists using online services such as email-checker.com or Brite Verify to avoid high levels of bounce-backs – failed deliveries, which can occur for numerous reasons.

After ensuring your contact list is compliant, you need to write your permission reminder. We recommend between two and four sentences placed at the bottom of your email. When writing the reminder, keep it polite and specific. Explain how you have their email address and the method they used to opt in. At the end of the statement give the reader the opportunity to be removed from your mailing list with an unsubscribe link.

Here are two examples of good permission reminders:

‘You’re receiving this email because you signed up for our product newsletter. If you’d like to be removed from our mailing list please click here: Unsubscribe’

‘We’re contacting you because, as an existing customer, we’d like to keep you up to date with special offers. Please click unsubscribe to be removed from our mailing list’

If you’re having difficulty writing a robust permission reminder, you may not have a good enough reason to email the contacts on your mailing list. If this is the case, be cautious and consider postponing your plans.

We hope this post has given you some useful insight into permission reminders. TMCC Marketing offers profit driven marketing solutions, so if you have any needs for this type of service please click through to our ‘contact us’ page.