Marketing vs. Transactional Emails
How to pick between our different sending features depending on your number of recipients and the nature of the message.
Humanic enables you to send both Transactional and Marketing emails.
What’s the difference between Transactional and Marketing emails?
What is a Marketing email?
A Marketing email is any email that is not transactional. These can be promotional, informative, or general communication messages.Marketing emails are regulated by laws like CAN-SPAM (US) and CASL (Canada), and recipients must have the option to unsubscribe.Examples of marketing emails:
Promotional offers and discounts
Newsletters
Product updates
Marketing emails can be 1-to-1 (e.g., abandoned cart reminders) or 1-to-many (e.g., newsletters).
What is a Transactional email?
A Transactional email is a message triggered by a user action or required for legal compliance. These emails are essential communications that users cannot unsubscribe from. Common examples include:
Order confirmations
Password reset emails
Account notifications
Typically, transactional emails are 1-to-1 messages sent in response to a specific event.
Should I be sending a Transactional or a Marketing email?
While not exhaustive, here’s a table listing different examples of emails and the most appropriate type for each example.
Order confirmation
Single
✓
⨯
Password reset
Single
✓
⨯
Abandoned cart
Single
⨯
✓
Newsletter
Multiple
⨯
✓
Promotional offer
Multiple
⨯
✓
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