Create a transactional email
Note
Email and SMS channels are legacy features and not offered to new customers.
The transactional email add-on lets an account send emails for business transactions such as order receipts, account updates, and shipping confirmations. Transactional emails are for relationship-based interactions, while marketing emails are for promotional activities.
Note
Transactional email is an optional platform add-on. Contact Optimizely Support for details.
Marketing and transactional email
Marketing emails are promotional messages sent to a group of recipients to promote products or services, build relationships, or increase brand awareness. They can include newsletters, special offers, event invitations, or product updates that you can typically use as part of a broader digital marketing strategy to engage with current or potential customers. Use an unsubscribe link to keep your emails out of the recipient's junk folder and comply with common privacy laws, such as CAN-SPAM.
Transactional emails are triggered through an event within an application or website. They can include order confirmation and receipt, shipping information, and password resets. They are usually sent to individual recipients and complete a transaction or process. You do not need to include an unsubscribe link, as recipients must receive the information in these emails.
Note
Transactional emails are not triggered through a CSV upload. Instead, customers have to pass an event through an API.
To trigger a transactional email, complete the following steps:
- Pass an event to ODP. See Upload eventsUpload events to learn how to pass the event through an API.
- Create a custom event to trigger the email.
- Pass the values from the event's key value pairs to the email as merge tags.
Transactional email best practices
It can be difficult to distinguish between marketing and transactional emails. As rules and regulations vary by region, you should know your region's laws. Avoid using unnecessary information in your transactional emails and observe the following best practices:
- Use a clear "From Address".
- Include critical information in the subject line.
- Align transactional email designs with your brand.
- Identify the reason the recipient is receiving the email.
- Ensure the content of your email is informational and not promotional.
Create a transactional email
- Go to Activations > Overview > Create New Campaign > Transactional.
- Select a transactional email recipe if you have integrations with a compatible third-party app, or select Create From Scratch.
- Select the event to trigger the campaign from the Filter drop-down list.
- Configure Touchpoints.
- Click Save.
- Click Go Live.
