How to Create Mailto Links in HTML

With HTML mailto links, you can prepare custom email messages ahead of time by adding email recipients, carbon copy and blind carbon copy recipient lists, and editing the subject line and message body.

This tutorial will teach you how to create links using all these different options.

A Basic Message

At a minimum, you must supply at least one valid email address in your anchor tag. All anchor links must start with the prefix mailto: to work correctly.

To launch the user's default email application with a recipient's email address pre-filled, use the following example:

<a href="mailto:someone@domain.com">Email Us</a>

You can also supply multiple email recipients at once in a comma-delimited format:

<a href="mailto:someone1@domain.com,someone2@domain.com">Email Us</a>

Add CC and BCC

To carbon copy or blind carbon copy an email address, you can use the cc and bcc attributes in href:

<a href="mailto:someone1@domain.com?cc=someone2@domain.com&bcc=someone3@domain.com">Email Us</a>

Add A Subject Line

If you'd like to pre-populate the subject line of the email, you add the subject attribute to href:

<a href="mailto:someone@domain.com?subject=Hello There">Email Us</a>

Add Body Text

To pre-populate the body of the email with some text, you can add the body attribute to href:

<a href="mailto:someone@domain.com?subject=Hello There&body=Don't be afraid.">Email Us</a>

A Few Useful Tidbits

Here are a few things to mention about mailto links:

• Using spaces in your subject line and body text should work without issue. If you're still hesitant, you can always replace each space with "+" to make it URL friendly, but it's not required.
• mailto links will work on any modern desktop computer or mobile device, assuming the user has a default email program set up on their machine. If they don't, the link will appear like it doesn't work because nothing will happen when they click on it.
• Another thing to highly consider is using these links anywhere on your site. Exposing your email address either in plain view or in your HTML code could open your inbox to potential unwanted spam. In this case, I recommend setting up a contact form on your site instead.

Conclusion

This article explained the usage of mailto links in HTML with a few attributes like carbon copy lists, subject lines, and message body text. Give them a shot on your site!