What this is for#
Businesses send two kinds of email, and they are treated differently by the law, by mailbox providers
and by readers. This article shows how to tell them apart, where the line blurs, and why it pays to
send them through separate channels. Terms are defined in the
Email Marketing Glossary.
The two kinds#
|
Transactional email |
Marketing email |
| Sent because |
One person did something, or something changed on their account |
You decided to send it to a list or segment |
| Examples |
Order confirmation, receipt, invoice, shipping notice, password reset, security alert |
Newsletter, promotion, product announcement, re-engagement campaign |
| The reader |
Expects it, often waits for it |
Welcomes it if they asked for it; can ignore it |
| Consent |
Not needed to send the transaction's own message |
Needed in opt-in countries |
| Unsubscribe link |
Not required for a purely transactional message — nobody can opt out of their own receipts |
Required |
An abandoned-cart reminder is triggered by one person's action, but its purpose is to sell, so it is
usually treated as marketing.
Where the line blurs#
Adding a promotion to a receipt is common. Under the US CAN-SPAM Act, the FTC decides what such a mixed
message is by its primary purpose: if a reader would take the subject line as an advertisement, or
the transactional part does not come first in the body, the whole message counts as commercial and all
the marketing rules apply — consent where required, an unsubscribe link, your postal address.
A simple habit keeps you on the right side: the subject line and the top of the email are about the
transaction; any promotion comes after it, small and secondary.
Why send them separately#
- One cannot hurt the other. A promotion that draws complaints can damage the reputation of the
domain and IP address it was sent from. If password resets share that domain and IP, they start
landing in spam too — exactly the mail your customers cannot do without.
- They behave differently. Transactional mail goes out one message at a time, immediately, all day.
Marketing mail goes out in large batches. Mixing them makes both harder to monitor.
- Different rules. Gmail's one-click unsubscribe requirement for bulk senders covers marketing and
subscribed messages; transactional messages are exempt.
Sending providers commonly recommend a separate subdomain for each kind — for example
mail.example.com for transactional mail and news.example.com for marketing — and, at higher volume,
a separate IP address or sending server as well.
How this shows up in AcelleMail#
What to do after#
- List every email your business sends and mark each one transactional or marketing. Anything that
sells is marketing, whatever triggered it.
