Introduction to transactional email

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About transactional email

Transactional emails are automated, API-triggered emails that are sent to individual contacts based on a specific action they have taken.

Examples include confirmation emails, password reset emails, and purchase confirmations.

Unlike marketing emails (campaigns or loops), transactional emails are not promotional in nature and as a result, they do not require unsubscribe information to be included in the email.

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Transactional vs marketing emails

Marketing emails are a type of promotional email that are sent to your list of subscribers or customers with the goal of promoting your product, service, or brand.

These types of emails can take many forms such as investor updates, product update newsletters, special offers, webinar invitations, customer case studies, and much more.

Marketing emails are a 1-to-many communication, meaning that the same exact email that you craft can (and probably will) be sent and read by a number of recipients or customers.

Transactional emails are automated messages that are triggered by a specific user action.

These types of emails can include things like a purchase confirmation or password reset instructions.

Transactional emails are a 1-to-1 communication, meaning that the specific email sent will only be read by the single recipient it was sent to. These emails will typically include content that is unique and changing based on who is receiving it.

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Unsubscribe links

Marketing email (campaigns and loops) you send with Loops will contain an unsubscribe link. Transactional emails will not.

This key difference is due to legal requirements. You should not send marketing emails as transactional emails through Loops.

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Contacts

Contacts behave slightly differently between transactional and marketing emails (campaigns and loops).

• Your Audience only contains marketing contacts. If a new contact is sent a transactional email, they are not added to your Audience.
• Sending a transactional email to a new contact will not trigger the “Contact added” loop trigger.
• The “Subscribed” contact property does not affect transactional emails. Unsubscribed contacts will still receive all transactional emails they are sent.