Compliance footers

A footer is a block appended below every rendered signature at render time. No template carries it, which means no template can forget it.

This is the compliance surface. Where a legal disclaimer is mandatory, putting it in a footer rather than in each template removes the possibility of somebody creating a template without it.

One per email domain

You can define one footer per email domain, plus an optional default that applies to any domain without its own.

The domain used for matching is the domain of the address the message is being sent from, not the mailbox’s primary address. Somebody sending from a subsidiary’s alias gets the subsidiary’s footer. See how it works.

Selection is specific first: a footer matching the sending domain wins over the default.

Writing a footer

Footer HTML supports the same placeholders and conditional sections as a template, so a footer can include the company name or the office address without being written per office.

<p style="font-size:11px;color:#666;">
  {{companyName}} is registered in England and Wales.
  {{#streetAddress}}Registered office: {{streetAddress}}, {{city}} {{postalCode}}.{{/streetAddress}}
</p>

Keep footers plain. They are legal text rather than design, most people never read them, and a heavy footer costs size on every message.

Style footer text down: a smaller size and a lower contrast grey is conventional and keeps the signature itself readable.

What a footer counts against

The 30,000 character limit applies to the whole rendered signature, which includes the footer. A long disclaimer eats into the budget available to the template.

See Outlook constraints.

How quickly changes take effect

Footer edits reach users within seconds. The footer in force is part of the rendered-signature cache key, so publishing a change strands the affected cached entries immediately.

Footers and banners together

Both apply on top of the template. A signature can carry a banner above or below it and a footer beneath, and the three are assembled per request.

The assembled result is cached against all three identities and their versions, so changing any one of them takes effect without touching the others.

Who can manage footers

Footers are managed by Admins. The Editor role covers templates and images but not footers, and the Marketing role reaches neither. See users and roles.

That split is deliberate: a compliance footer is usually owned by legal or IT rather than by whoever is editing the signature design.

Checking a footer

Use the download action on the Templates view to render the live signature for a mailbox on the domain in question. The footer appears in the output exactly as a recipient would see it.

To check it in a real mail client, send a test email.