--- title: "Transactional and marketing emails" date: "2024-04-15T11:52:48+00:00" summary: "Understand the key differences between transactional and marketing emails to optimize your email strategy and customer engagement." image: type: "page" url: "/campaign-studio/transactional-and-marketing-emails" id: "cb0da04f-29bc-4a0b-8733-4d3df04b4c3a" --- Table of contents will be added. Transactional or operational emails and marketing emails are two distinct types of email communication that serve different purposes within your email marketing strategy. While both emails types are vital to a business's communication strategy, they differ in their content, purpose, audience, and regulatory considerations. Understanding these differences helps businesses effectively manage email communications and optimize their engagement with customers. Transactional emails -------------------- Transactional or operational emails serve an operational and business purpose. They are typically one-to-one communications such as order confirmations, shipping notifications, password resets, or account updates. They can also be Support emails with critical product updates such as terms of service. They contain information that is relevant to an ongoing transaction or account status, and are crucial for good customer service and seamless operation of a business’s online services. Transactional emails have high open rates and are generally expected and welcomed by recipients.  Important Transactional emails can be sent to contacts who have unsubscribed from email communications and are on your Do Not Contact list, so that none of the contacts misses these important communications. Campaign Studio users can set an email as a transactional or operational email by setting **Send to unsubscribed contacts** to **Yes** in the **Advanced** tab on the Emails page. Marketing emails ---------------- Marketing or non-transactional emails are designed to engage your contacts and include marketing related content such as newsletters, promotional announcements, event invitations, and other messages intended to build brand awareness, increase customer loyalty, and drive sales. This type of emails require recipient's consent and are typically subject to greater regulatory scrutiny, such as compliance with anti-spam laws and [GDPR](/campaign-studio/general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr-campaign-studio "General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Campaign Studio"). For more information, see: * [Maintaining a clean contact list](/campaign-studio/maintaining-clean-contact-list "Maintaining a clean contact list") * [Bounce Management FAQ](/campaign-studio/bounce-management-faq "Bounce Management FAQ") * [Maintaining email reputation](/node/56755/#section-maintaining-email-reputation) Important Marketing emails cannot be sent to contacts who have unsubscribed from email communications and are on your Do Not Contact list. Campaign Studio users can set an email as a marketing or non-transactional email by setting **Send to unsubscribed contacts** to **No** in the **Advanced** tab on the Emails page. Creating transactional and marketing emails  -------------------------------------------- Campaign Studio users can set individual emails as transactional or marketing (non-transactional) emails to effectively manage their email communications and optimize engagement with customers.  Note Only administrator users or roles with **Email Permissions** > **Send to unsubscribed contacts** selected can mark emails as transactional emails. For more information, see [Roles](/campaign-studio/roles "Roles"). 1. Log in to Campaign Studio. 2. Create a new template or segment email. For more information, see [Email basics](/campaign-studio/email-basics "Email basics"). 3. On the New Email page, click the **Advanced** tab.  For more information, see the [Advanced](/node/56754/#section-advanced) section on the Email basics page. 4. Locate the **Send to unsubscribed contacts** field and do one of the following: * To create a transactional email, set the toggle to **Yes.** The system displays a confirmation dialog box.  * To create a marketing email, set the toggle to **No.** Based on this setting, Campaign Studio displays a **Send to unsubscribed contacts** status field with a **Yes** or **No** indicator for any email used in the following features: * **Send email** and **Send email to user** [actions within a campaign](/node/55882/#section-actions)  * **Send marketing message** [action within a campaign](/node/55882/#section-actions) * [Marketing message](/campaign-studio/marketing-messages "Marketing Messages") email channel  * **Send email to contact** and **Send email to user** [form actions](/campaign-studio/form-basics#section-form-actions "Form basics") * [Points triggers](/node/56776/#section-point-triggers) Important considerations for transactional and marketing emails --------------------------------------------------------------- * Transactional emails with **Send to unsubscribed** **contacts** set to **Yes** are not sent to hard bounced email addresses. * DNC contacts are not counted towards the **Pending** status for marketing emails with **Send to unsubscribed contacts** set to **No.** * DNC contacts are counted towards the **Pending** status for transactional emails with **Send to unsubscribed contacts** set to **Yes**. For more in information, see [Email statuses](/node/56754/#section-email-statuses).  * The setting for **Send to unsubscribed contacts** on the **Advanced** tab of the email determines whether an email is counted towards the [Frequency Rule](/campaign-studio/frequency-rule "Frequency rule") calculation. * If the **Send to unsubscribed contacts** toggle is set to **Yes**, the email is not counted towards the frequency rule. * If the **Send to unsubscribed contacts** toggle is set to **No**, the email is counted towards the frequency rule. One-click unsubscribe headers ----------------------------- * Campaign Studio includes a one-click unsubscribe header in emails depending on the **Send to unsubscribed contacts** field: * If this field is set to **Yes**, Campaign Studio does not add the one-click unsubscribe header. * If this field is set to **No**, Campaign Studio adds the one-click unsubscribe header. If you do not want Campaign Studio to add a one-click unsubscribe header, you can disable this feature in through [Email Settings](/campaign-studio/configuration "Configuration"). Unsubscribe links ----------------- * Campaign Studio includes an unsubscribe link in the email body depending on the **Send to unsubscribed contacts** field: * If this field is set to **Yes**, Campaign Studio does not add the unsubscribe link. * If this field is set to **No**, Campaign Studio adds the unsubscribe link. * Users can manually add unsubscribe links to the email body by using either of the following: * Token merge tags such as `{unsubscribe_url}`, `{unsubscribe_text}`  * HTML URLs such as `Unsubscribe` When you manually add an unsubscribe link to the email body, Campaign Studio validates the link and retains it in the email body. Resubscribe links ----------------- Campaign Studio supports double-opt out campaigns that allow contacts to resubscribe to email communications. * Users can manually add resubscribe links to the email body by using either of the following: * Token merge tags such as `{resubscribe_url}`, `{unsubscribe_text}` * HTML URLs such as `Resubscribe` Sending repeating emails ------------------------ When sending emails in a campaign, you can select a template email to send to contacts only once or multiple times depending on your needs.  * Repeatable emails can be sent to a contact multiple times across all campaigns and are often used for transactional or operational messages that are relevant to the contact.  For example, e-commerce receipts, order conformations, shipping notifications, and receipts. Also, support emails with critical product updates such as terms of service. * Non-repeatable emails can be sent to a contact only once and are generally used for marketing type content intended for a commercial purpose. To make an email repeatable or non-repeatable: 1. Log in to Campaign Studio. 2. Create a new [campaign](/campaign-studio/campaigns "Campaigns"). 3. Create a **Send email** action. 4. In the **Email to send** dropdown, select an email. Based on the setting of **Send to unsubscribed contacts** on the **Advanced** tab on the Emails page, the status of **Send to unsubscribed contacts** is displayed. If status of **Send to unsubscribed contacts** is set to **No**, the system displays the **Priority** and **Attempts** fields. 5. To send the email to contacts only once, set the **Repeatable email** toggle to **No**. 6. To send the email to contacts multiple times across all campaigns, set the **Repeatable email** toggle to **Yes**. The default frequency rule is applied.