About Transactional Email

Copy Article URL

Copied

Transactional emails are emails sent to one contact at a time based on purchase or account activity. Examples of transactional emails include order confirmations, password resets, and appointment reminders. Mailchimp offers a few different ways to send transactional email.

In this article, you'll learn about transactional emails and how you can use Mailchimp to send them.

Definitions

Bulk email Email sent from one sender to multiple recipients, usually for marketing purposes.

Transactional email Email sent from one sender to one recipient, usually related to account activity or a commercial transaction. Examples include password reminder emails and purchase confirmations.

Mailchimp Transactional A delivery API that sends transactional emails and SMS messages from websites and applications. You can add this service Standard plan or higher. Transactional SMS requires an active SMS Marketing Plan.

Automation A tool that allows you to create an email or series of emails that are triggered by an event.

Order notifications Automated transactional emails that are triggered by purchase activity in your connected store.

Abandoned cart email Automated emails that are triggered when someone adds products to their online shopping cart, but doesn't complete their purchase.

What is a transactional email?

A transactional email is an email that is sent to an individual recipient following a commercial transaction or specific action performed by that person, such as a purchase in your connected store or a password reset request.

What qualifies as a transactional email?

A transactional email is one that facilitates a commercial transaction or relationship or provides an update about an ongoing commercial transaction. Common examples include:

  • Order confirmation
  • Notification emails (for example, shipping confirmation and updates, or order refunds)
  • Subscription confirmation

Transactional email vs bulk email: What’s the difference?

Here are some differences between transactional email and bulk email.

Transactional email Bulk email
Audience and trigger sent to one contact after being triggered by a commercial transaction or event sent from one sender to multiple recipients are for marketing purposes
Content and purpose contains information specific to the commercial transaction that just took place contains promotional marketing messages
Opt-in requirements recipients don’t need to be subscribed contacts (opt-in not required) recipients must be subscribed contacts (opt-in required)
Unsubscribe link unsubscribe link not required unsubscribe link required

In some jurisdictions, an email that contains any promotional content will be considered a marketing email that can only be sent to contacts who have opted in to receiving marketing messages and requires an unsubscribe mechanism. Be careful to consider applicable law before including any promotional content in a transactional email.

Are abandoned cart emails transactional?

It depends. In some jurisdictions, emails sent after a customer abandons items in their cart on an e-commerce site are not considered transactional under applicable law. In those jurisdictions, while these emails are specific to one individual customer, they are considered marketing emails. With Mailchimp, you can choose which types of contacts can receive abandoned cart emails. It’s important to take applicable law into consideration when making that decision.

Email subscription requirements

Unlike transactional emails, marketing emails (including bulk emails and abandoned cart emails) can only be sent to subscribed contacts. If you want to send a marketing email to someone, that person needs to have opted in to receive marketing or promotional emails from you.

If they’re not subscribed to your email marketing, then you do not have permission to contact them for marketing purposes. Doing so could bring you out of compliance with applicable data protection and email marketing laws like the GDPR and the U.S. CAN-SPAM Act.

All marketing emails need to have an unsubscribe link allowing subscribers to opt out at any time.

No, because transactional emails do not require the recipient to be subscribed to your email marketing in the first place.

As these emails relate to a specific commercial transaction, the recipient can expect that they will not continue to receive emails from you in the future that are not related to this transaction (or at least until their next purchase).

You can offer customers the option to sign up for your email marketing at checkout. However, if they did not opt in to marketing emails, merely the fact that a customer gave you their email address as part of the transaction does not necessarily mean you can send them marketing emails without their consent.

How transactional email works

Transactional emails allow you to provide information that is uniquely relevant to the recipient. These emails can provide requested information or let them know about order status changes such as shipping notifications.

Transactional email generally uses an API or SMTP integration to send emails. This usually requires a developer to set up a system that will send coded templates to specific recipients based on a specific action. In Mailchimp, however, you can quickly create transactional emails like you would any email campaign. You can send these emails to most types of contacts in your audience.

Example uses

For many companies and organizations, it makes sense to use both bulk and transactional email. Here are some examples for when you might use one or the other.

Bulk email

  • Newsletters
  • Product promotions
  • Event invitation or announcement
  • Welcome series
  • Educational series

Transactional email

  • Abandoned cart messages*
  • Account creation
  • Order notifications
  • Password reminders
  • Product or service feedback

*While you can use Mailchimp’s transactional email features and services to send abandoned cart emails, they may not be considered transactional emails under certain email marketing laws. Take applicable law into consideration when deciding who can receive these emails.

Transactional email in Mailchimp

Mailchimp offers a couple of ways to send transactional emails: our built-in automation feature and the Mailchimp Transactional add-on. The one you use depends on your business goals and access to developers.

Mailchimp Marketing vs. Mailchimp Transactional

Mailchimp Marketing’s built-in automation feature includes some transactional emails, like order notifications. Use our drag-and-drop editor to customize these emails to fit the look and feel of your brand. You can also use Mailchimp Marketing’s built-in automation feature to create and send abandoned cart messages to your contacts.

For more robust transactional options, we offer an advanced delivery API, Mailchimp Transactional. Use Mailchimp Transactional to send transactional emails such as purchase receipts, shipping confirmations, and account change notifications. Mailchimp Transactional also offers transactional SMS messaging in some locations for alerts such as One-Time Passwords, delivery confirmations, and appointment reminders.

Here’s a comparison of Mailchimp Marketing and Mailchimp Transactional, to help you decide which works best for you.

Mailchimp Marketing Mailchimp Transactional
What it's for Mailchimp Marketing is an all-in-one marketing platform that specializes in bulk email. Bulk email is sent to multiple recipients at once, usually for marketing purposes. You can also create certain types of transactional messages in Mailchimp Marketing, like order notifications. Mailchimp Transactional is Mailchimp’s dedicated transactional email and SMS service. Mailchimp Transactional sends email(s) to one recipient, triggered by the recipient's action or inaction.
Plan requirements Mailchimp Marketing has several plan options with different sets of features to best fit your needs. Single-step automations, including a limited number of transactional emails, are available to all users. Mailchimp Transactional is a paid add-on to a Standard or Premium monthly Marketing plan. For transactional email, you'll buy blocks of Mailchimp Transactional credits at a recurring monthly rate. To learn more about available Mailchimp Transactional plans, check out Mailchimp Transactional Pricing.
Audience vs. recipients Mailchimp Marketing is an audience-based system. You create audiences in Mailchimp Marketing to organize your contacts and send them emails, ads, and other types of messages. Our Terms of Use require you to get express permission from anyone you send marketing emails to. Transactional email within Mailchimp Transactional is a recipient-based system. Contact lists and other recipient information can't be stored in Mailchimp Transactional. Instead, this data is managed in your own database or application, and passed to Mailchimp Transactional in your API request or SMTP message when the transactional email is triggered.
Level of skill Mailchimp Marketing offers beginner-friendly tools to help you design and send emails. You don’t need any prior knowledge of HTML or APIs. And when your email looks how you want, you can schedule or send it from the Mailchimp Marketing application. Mailchimp Transactional requires no HTML knowledge to design transactional emails. Use the Mailchimp email builder to create templates. After creating your email template, publish the template to the transactional service. A developer must connect the API or SMTP integration to send the email.

Get started

Ready to begin sending transactional emails with Mailchimp? Here are some resources to help you get started.

Mailchimp Marketing

Create Order Notifications Create a Classic Abandoned Cart Email

Mailchimp Transactional

Add or Remove Transactional Email Mailchimp Transactional Guides and Tutorials

Design Transactional Templates

Design your transactional email templates in the Mailchimp template builder. When the design is ready, publish it to make it available to the Mailchimp Transactional. Edit and republish templates at any time.

Create and Email Template

Save and Use a Template

About Mailchimp Pricing Plans

Whether you're starting out or already have a large number of contacts, we have a pricing option for you. Learn about Mailchimp's pricing plans, features, and add-ons.