Guides
Transactional vs marketing email: what is the difference?
Your business probably sends two very different kinds of email. Some are announcements you choose to send to many people at once. Others are messages one person needs right now because of something they just did. Treating them the same way causes problems for both.
The difference at a glance
Marketing email is sent to a list, as a campaign: newsletters, promotions, product launches and announcements. Transactional email is sent to one person because of something they did: a login code, a password reset, an order confirmation or an account notification.
| Marketing email | Transactional email | |
|---|---|---|
| Examples | Newsletters, promotions, launches, announcements | Login codes, password resets, order confirmations, notifications |
| Sent to | Many people at once, from a list | One person |
| Triggered by | You, when you schedule or send a campaign | The person's own action in your app or website |
| Timing | When you choose | Right away: a login code that arrives late is useless |
| Consent | Recipients must have opted in and be able to unsubscribe | Part of a service the person is using |
| Success measured by | Opens, clicks and sales | Whether it arrived and was opened |
Why send them separately
If a login code waits in the same queue as a large newsletter, your customer waits too. Keeping transactional email on its own lane means it is not held up by campaigns, and problems with one kind of email do not spill over to the other.
How Flashmail handles both
| Campaigns | Transactional email | |
|---|---|---|
| How you create it | Drag-and-drop builder or templates | Saved templates with placeholders such as code or name |
| How it is sent | To your lists, now or on a schedule | Through an API call from your app, with its own API key |
| Sending lane | The campaign pipeline | A priority lane apart from campaigns |
| Tracking | A report for every campaign | Automatic open tracking, visible on the logs page |
| Learn more | Email Campaigns | Transactional Email |
Which one do I need?
- Telling many people about something? That is a campaign.
- Responding to one person's action in your app? That is transactional.
Many businesses need both. Availability of the transactional email API depends on your plan; see Pricing, or talk to us.
