Email is a great way for a site to establish contact with its visitors and acquire new subscribers. Among the different existing tools, the mailto link is efficient and easy to install. This clickable text to send a message directly to a defined email address offers some interesting customization options. We tell you more here.
What is the mailto?
The Mailto link is an HTML link, a URL schema to be more accurate, returning to an email address. It allows, when click on, open a window to send a message directly to the recipient by seeking its email software. It can be done from an email, a web page or even from a document.
You can place your link mailto:team@example.com, simply entering a “contact us“. When the person click on it, it will access the sending directly to your address. A practical tool for users who want to communicate easily and quickly with the manager of a website for example.
Easy to set up, the mailto also allows pre-fill some default fields, such as the subject of the mail, the recipients as well as the content. On the other hand, the mailto does not work for users who use a webmail without prior configuration, and does not offer many possibilities for customizing the message. At last attention to spambots (computer bots) that sometimes use Mailto commands to retrieve addresses used to send spam.
How to customize the mailto link?
To create your mailto link, start by writing the word or group of words that will serve you as a link, that is, what the user will see.
- Example: Contact our team
Select the word or group of words, then insert the mailtto link with in the address on which it must return to the user.
example for a single recipient:
‹a href="mailto:example@example.com">Contact our team‹/a>
example for multiple recipients:
‹a href="mailto:example1@example.com;example2@example.com">Contact our team‹/a>
The mailto can take different forms. Here we chose “Contact our team”, but it could also be an email address, a recipient name, a particular word, a sentence, etc. It all depends on your business, people likely to click and the type of message concerned. If it is a contact message for your partners, enter “Left Cuckoo” for your mailto will not really be good.
What about the object and message of the email?
The mailto link can also be optimized by filling the subject of the email.
for example, if the object is “Hello”:
‹a href="mailto:example@example?subject=Hello">Contact our team‹/a>
The principle is the same for the content of the message. Example:
‹a href="mailto:example@example?subject=Hello&body=Message">Contact our team‹/a>
And about recipients in copying?
If you also want the email to be sent to recipients in copy and/or hidden copy, in this case you will have to type the following lines of code:
‹a href-"mailto:example@example.com?subject=Hello&cc=example@toto.com&bcc=example@tata.com">Contact our team‹/a>
If the options you offer the Mailto links are not sufficient, the form can be a good alternative, and goes from the simplest form (visitor email and message), to more complex configurations (name and first name of the visitor, Email address, choice of subject, etc.). It provides more accurate information than the Mailto, sort the emails received according to the subject indicated for example and has less risk of addresses by spammers. It’s up to you to try both and see which one best matches your needs.
