Vital sends: Ultimate guide to transactional emails

There’s a strange dichotomy at play in email marketing. The emails sent most frequently are also most likely to be forgotten about. 

It’s understandable — transactional emails, by nature, should be more ‘set and forget’ than other email types. But that doesn’t mean they should be ignored. These essential sends are more likely to be opened by your customer, and paying attention to the details can help strengthen your relationship with your customers, reduce the number of tickets for your customer support team, and more. 

What are transactional emails?

Transactional emails are 1:1 automated emails that are triggered by a specific customer action or regular event. As the name suggests, they are typically related to a specific transaction or, in the case of a SaaS or other subscription business, account updates. They are essential communications that a customer will be expecting to receive, and should not be promotional. 

Types of transactional emails

The types of transactional emails you send will largely depend on the type of business. They may include:

• Account activation emails

• Password reset requests

• Subscription renewal reminders

• Payment reminders

• Credit card expiry notifications

• Billing updates

• Invoice or purchase receipts

• Order confirmation

• Shipping confirmation 

• Event registration confirmation 

• Updates to user permissions 

• Customer feedback requests 

• Double opt-in emails

• Usage reports or reaching-limit alerts

Transactional emails best practices 

Since transactional emails are expected and generally contain important information, your customer is more likely to open and read them. Each email adds to their overall perception of your brand and your business and improves your relationship with them. That’s why it’s important to pay attention to the details and follow these best practices: 

1. Protect your domain reputation 

A payment reminder or credit card expiry alert landing in spam can cause a lot of headaches, for you and your customer, so you want to do everything you can to improve your email deliverability and ensure your domain is trusted. 

To do this, consider sending your transactional emails from a separate domain or a subdomain. Then if your email deliverability suffers from a negative sender reputation as a result of bulk promotional sends, your transactional emails won’t be affected. 

As always, remember to maintain your email lists and have processes in place to ensure people who have unsubscribed to not receive unwanted emails. Use natural, human language and send engaging emails that are likely to be opened by your subscribers. 

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2. Send emails as soon as the action occurs

Most transactional emails are time-sensitive and, in some cases like receipts, a delay can leave your customer feeling anxious or frustrated. When you set your transactional emails up, do not use time delays or other filters or shapes that could delay the send — the aim is to reach the inbox right after the action is taken. 

3. Mark emails as transactional

If your email marketing platform allows, mark which emails are transactional or use a separate IP to isolate transactional emails and ensure they are delivered reliably, regardless of the email or SMS limits you have set and irrespective of a person’s subscription status.  

This plays into the point above — by marking an email as transactional and ensuring it overrules any limits you have, you can ensure your customers will receive the email almost as soon as they take the associated action (like signing up or making a purchase). 

4. Follow data privacy and spam laws

Different anti-spam laws, like GDPR and CAN-SPAM, have different rules that apply to transactional mail. Generally, these policies dictate that you need to acquire consent from each individual to send marketing messages to them. This poses a problem for transactional emails like receipts and payment notifications because they are necessary emails that need to be sent to someone regardless of their subscription status.

To overcome this, GDPR dictates that you need to establish ‘legitimate interests’ — in other words, you need to ensure that the email is an essential communication that the customer is expecting to receive. You can think of it this way — if you make a purchase and hand over your email in the process, you are expecting, and therefore consenting, to receive an email. Since GDPR is stricter, you should be careful not to include any material that could be deemed promotional in these emails.

The CAN-SPAM Act offers a little more freedom, allowing for some light promotional material to appear alongside the essential operational information, so long as the subject line reflects the primary purpose of the email and the 'from' field accurately identifies the sender. 

Other jurisdictions have their own specifications, so it’s worth exploring the regulations in different countries or districts you regularly send to and, in general, ask yourself if the emails you’re marking as transactional are truly necessary. 

5. Use a clear and recognizable subject line and ‘from’ address

Your subject line and from field are the two things a customer sees when they open their inbox, and dictate whether that email will be opened or trashed. 

With promotional emails, you have some creative leeway and can play around with creating a curiosity gap to increase opens. With transactional emails, it’s important to be as clear and succinct as possible. For example ‘Your receipt for xyz’ or ‘Welcome to xyz’ is enough for the customer to quickly understand what the email is about and open it.  

The from field should be similarly clear and concise, and you should consider sending from a clear unique sender address to adhere to CAN-SPAM rules, help email service providers identify what the email is about. and ensure your customer can quickly and easily identify your email in their inbox.  

6. Design for simplicity and brand consistency  

Now is not the time for elaborate designs or imagery, but transactional emails are some of the most opened and most frequently sent, so it is important to pay attention to how your brand is represented visually. 

Include your logo and use your brand colors and fonts in the email. Even very simple emails, like receipts, can incorporate these things to ensure your email contributes to the overall mental tattoo your brand leaves. 

Anytime you make a change to your branding, whether that’s a full rebrand or a tweak to a color or font, make sure to go back and edit every transactional email you have. Consistency is key! 

7. Personalize, and be personal 

Transactional emails are, by nature, personalized. They are a 1:1 email that is triggered by an action the customer takes, and they generally include personal information like name, account details, or purchase information. 

If you want to form a strong bond with your customers, consider how you can be more personal in your communication. For example, change the language you use to feel more human or sign the email off from an actual human member of your team. 

8. Track important metrics 

While you don’t need to track the performance of your transactional emails as closely as you do promotional emails, it is important to keep an eye on relevant metrics, like:

• Open rate

• Click-through rate

• Bounce rate

• Unsubscribe rate 

If any of these metrics start to fall below your baseline, consider how you could optimize to improve performance. For example, if the open rate on an invoice receipt suddenly drops, there could be an issue with deliverability or you might need to update the subject line to better reflect the contents. If the click-through rate on a password recovery or account update email falls, look at the placement and prominence of the CTA button and check the messaging is clear. 

Transactional emails FAQs

1. Do transactional emails need an unsubscribe link? 
   No, since your recipient does not need to subscribe to your list to receive a transactional email, you do not need to include an unsubscribe link. Ensure that the email is strictly operational and does not include marketing messaging and that the recipient will not accidentally be added to a subscribe list in your email marketing platform. 

2. Are abandoned cart emails transactional? 
   While abandoned cart emails are 1:1 and sent as a result of a direct action the recipient takes, they are not strictly necessary and more promotional, leaving them in slightly murky territory. In some jurisdictions, they are not considered transactional under applicable law, so it is important to check before setting up your emails. 

3. What are the CAN-SPAM rules for transactional emails?
   Transactional messages are exempt from most provisions of the CAN-SPAM Act, but they should not include misleading or false routing information (e.g. 'from' address).

4. Are survey emails considered transactional? 
   Customer satisfaction survey emails that are strictly about receiving feedback from your customers after they have made a purchase, interacted with support, or taken another action, could be considered transactional as they are operational and an important and necessary part of doing business. Surveys or questionnaires that are being used for market research, however, are not transactional or essential and should be treated like commercial or marketing emails. 

5. Can Ortto deliver transactional emails? 
   Yes, Ortto gives users the ability to mark emails as transactional or send directly through our transactional email API. These options help ensure that transactional emails are delivered reliably, at scale, and with speed.