A quick guide for more control over your email branding
You are using Mailchimp and you’ve decided to send a custom coded email, or you want to give light text HTML email a go, so you get more emails into gmail primary tab.
But, once you’ve created your email and hit the preview button, you see a big, ugly, white footer under your email that makes you look like an amateur.
This isn’t what you had in mind when you paid the designer for that sweet looking email, or it doesn’t look personal at all if you wanted to send a text based email.

Let me show you how to remove Mailchimp footer from your emails.
The solution is simple
I’ll quickly explain why this is happening.
Every email requires an unsubscribe link. That’s the law.
If your custom email doesn’t have unsubscribe link inside, Mailchimp’s system will notice this and add it (along with other footer info) to your email.
But even if you have an unsubscribe link, you could still be seeing the footer being added to your emails.
Why?
This happens if you are on free plan. Free plan requires you to have Mailchimp’s badge in your emails as well.
In short, if you’re missing unsubscribe link and Mailchimp badge (if on free plan) in your email content, Mailchimp will add their footer for you.
How to do it
In your footer area of the email, be sure to have this code added in:
<a href="*|UNSUB|*" target="_blank">Unsubscribe</a> <br><br> *|IF:REWARDS|* *|HTML:REWARDS|* *|END:IF|*
This adds unsubscribe link to your email and will also place a badge in your email if you’re using a free plan (or have the badge enabled in your paid plan).

That’s how you can remove Mailchimp footer that gets added in automatically to your custom emails. Don’t forget to add your address and other contact details in there so that your email complies with the anti spam laws.
Update 2019:
If your unsubscribe link is using pure black color (#000000), Mailchimp won’t register it as a legit unsubscribe link and will add their own footer anyway. Be sure to use any other color for that link.