The transactional email add-on enables an account to send emails for order receipts, account updates, shipping confirmations, and other essential business transactions. Transactional emails are for relationship-based interactions, unlike marketing emails, which are typically used for promotion.

Marketing vs. Transactional

Marketing email is any email that primarily contains a commercial message or content with commercial intent. This type of email is usually sent in a targeted fashion to a group of recipients. If you're attempting to nurture a lead down your funnel, then you’re most likely sending marketing emails. If this is the case, you should use an unsubscribe link, so your emails don’t end up in the junk folder, and you ensure compliance with common privacy laws such as CAN-SPAM. A few examples of marketing emails include:

• Newsletters
• Welcome series
• Seasonal promotions

Transactional email is an email that is triggered through an event that happened within an application or website. This type of email is usually sent to individual recipients and completes a transaction or process the recipient has started with you. Think of transactional email as time-sensitive emails that recipients are waiting to receive. If this is the case, you do not need to include an unsubscribe link as a recipient should always receive the information contained in these messages. A few examples of transactional emails include:

• Order confirmation and receipt
• Shipping information
• Password reset

Transactional best practices

The differences between marketing and transactional email aren't always obvious. The rules and regulations can vary by region. The takeaway — know the laws of the regions in which you operate. If there are doubts, avoid including additional unnecessary information in your transactional emails and keep these best practices in mind:

• Use an easy to understand “From Address”
• Communicate all of the critical information in the subject line
• Align the design of your transactional emails with your brand
• Identify the reason the recipient is receiving the email
• Ensure that the content of your email is informational and not promotional

Create a transactional email

To create and send a transactional email: 

• Navigate to Campaigns.
• In the upper left, click Create New Campaign.
• Select the Transactional option from the prompt. This option will not appear if you do not have the transactional email add-on. 
• Select a transactional email recipe if integrated with a compatible third-party app. Alternatively, elect to Create From Scratch. 
• Configure the email's event-based Enrollment settings and single touchpoint. 
• Save the changes and Go Live when ready.