When should you use Footer has everything it needs?
email-footer-complete · visual · required
When should you use this check?
Run this on commercial sends where the footer carries obligations, and run it on the delivered message rather than the template. The footer is the block most likely to be inherited from an old template, which means when it is wrong it is wrong identically across every campaign that inherited it — so one audit usually answers for a family. It complements the individual opt-out and postal-address checks by asking one question about the block as a whole, which is how a reviewer actually thinks about it.
When should you not?
Skip it on operational and transactional mail whose footer legitimately carries less: nobody may opt out of a security notice, and a receipt is exempt from the postal-address duty. It is also not the place to enforce brand styling of the footer — it asks which elements are present, not whether they are laid out correctly or legible. If you want the stronger, statute-specific reading of one element, the dedicated opt-out and address checks make sharper findings than a combined verdict does.
What does it inspect?
The email footer must contain every element you ask this check to look for. There is no default list: a curated standard states the elements its category owes, or you state your own. Selecting the check without either skips it rather than grading your footer against an assumed category.
What does a failure mean?
A failure names the required footer element it could not find. The cause is nearly always structural rather than editorial — an inherited block that was edited for one campaign, a platform whose wrapper supplies a different footer, or a merge that dropped a region. Because the same block is shared, treat a failure as a question about which templates inherit it rather than about the single campaign you happened to audit.
What are the Standard defaults — and why?
One parameter carries the check: `requiredFooterElements`, defaulting to `address` and `unsubscribe`. Those two are the elements a commercial send is actually obliged to carry, which is why they and nothing else are on by default — a longer default list would fail correct mail for organisations that have no such policy. The parameter is a list of named elements rather than free text, so the finding can say precisely which one was missing instead of reporting that a sentence was not satisfied.
How does an agent call it?
{
"type": "email",
"validations": [
"email-footer-complete"
]
}
Who governs the Standard?
Schemafirst.org publishes community-governed standards for digital QA. ArbiterQA is a sponsor and commercial licensee of those standards; citation does not mean Schemafirst operates ArbiterQA.
Author ArbiterQA · Reviewed by ArbiterQA · 2026-08-14