What is transactional email? What is it used for?
Transactional emails are those that are sent in response to something a user does on a website or app. They are usually sent to one user at a time and have information or content that is only for that user. Examples include:
Emails for resetting the password
- Emails sent upon account creation
- Welcome email
- confirmations of packages being shipped
- Payment Invoice
- a record of a purchase
- Emails serving as confirmation of orders
- Payment failure alerts
In general, receivers anticipate receiving transactional emails, and in many instances, they will actively refresh their inboxes until the message arrives. This is because recipients expect to get transactional emails.
Transactional vs marketing email
Marketing emails (also called promotional, broadcast, commercial, or bulk email) send the same message to a large number of people at the same time. Transactional emails, on the other hand, are sent to one person at a time and have content that is only relevant to that user. “Broadcast” emails are another name for transactional emails.
Most businesses send both transactional and promotional emails to their customers. To communicate with their customers, they use a combination of marketing automation software, email marketing, customer relationship management software, and email delivery services. Also, it is possible to put all marketing, sales, and transactional messages on the same platform.
What is the transactional email used for?
Transactional emails are the backbone of almost all businesses on the internet. They connect these businesses with their customers and users.
Because these emails are needed for the business to run, it’s easy for the website or product owner to think of them as “set it and forget it” notifications. But you shouldn’t forget that these emails have a bigger effect on how customers feel about your business and how likely they are to stay with you. If you’ve ever been locked out of an account and waited for an email to reset your password that never came, you know how frustrating a simple lost email can be.
User accounts and logins
This type of email includes alerts that are sent to users and customers when they open an account with a provider and keep that account up to date. These emails include the first message a user gets when they sign up for an account, as well as any password resets or messages with a “magic link” that the user gets in case they forget their login information.
Emails about an account will also have a list of all the alerts that were sent to an admin to let them know when new people or team members joined the account or when trials ended.
Payment processes
One of the most well-known sorts of transactional emails is one that relates to a certain transaction (hence the name). If a customer makes a purchase online, for instance, they will typically receive an order confirmation and/or a receipt. On the other hand, if a recurring payment fails or there are problems with the processing of payments, the customer may instead receive a notification that there was a payment failure in the form of a dunning email.
Emails that are triggered by specific events
These kinds of transactional emails are similar to push notifications you get on your phone, but they are sent to your email inbox instead of your phone.
Unlike the other transactional emails we’ve seen so far, event-driven notifications aren’t usually triggered by something the recipient does. Instead, they can let the recipient know about something that has happened (like being mentioned in a social media post or getting a package they were expecting) or remind them of something coming up soon. For instance, they may have been waiting for a package that has now been sent or delivered.
Emails that deliver content a user requested
These are the forms of transactional emails that provide information that a user has expressly requested as part of their experience with a particular product or service. This category may accommodate a large number of requests, including everything from data export or download to CSV files, airline itinerary details to e-books, PDFs, or any other downloadable goods that a customer wants to obtain.
Product usage
Users who want to keep track of important notifications but don’t want a lot of individual emails in their inboxes can use the summaries, reports, and digests in this category. Some of these emails might just be simple logs of what has happened during a certain time period (for example, information about daily, weekly, or monthly account activity).
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