Email Marketing Learning No. 1: Transactional vs Broadcast Mails
Some weeks ago I started to get into Email Marketing and since then I already learned quite a few things and even applied some of them.
Today I want to share my Learning No. 1: Transactional vs Broadcast Mails 💡
When you want to send Emails to your Customers regarding your Product, you distinguish between two types of emails: Transactional and Broadcast mails.
Let's have a look at those two categories, things that differentiate them and what you have to consider.
- Broadcast Mails
Those are mails you're going to send to many recipients at once, like a Newsletter or Updates about your Product.
They might have small adjustments per recipient, like greeting them with their personal name, but the overall content is the same.
Broadcast Mails typically require an opt-in by the receiver and if you don't want to hurt your reputation, you should play with this rule - Nobody wants to receive unexpected Marketing mails from strangers, else they probably get marked as spam.
You should also give the receiver the option to unsubscribe from future Broadcast mails with an Unsubscribe link at the bottom of the mail.
If the user isn't into the topic you're talking about anymore, let them go and don't make it unnecessarily hard for them to do so.
- Transactional Mails
These on the other hand are mails, which are tied to a specific transaction that was triggered by the user.
Some example mails are:
- Password Reset
- Notifications inside your Application
- Subscription Changes
You really want those mails to be landing in your users' inbox, as they are part of the functionality of your app.
Basically those mails also don't need an opt-in or an "Unsubscribe" link, as the receiver really expects those emails in his inbox.
Now there's also a mixed category: the so-called "Email Drips".
Theoretically, those emails are also Transactional Mails, as they targetting a specific receiver after a specific action.
But:
It's definitely a good practice to also let the user opt-in for those mails and don't send them randomly to every user.
They are not like the examples I listed above and have more of a "marketing" flavor to your receivers.
Let the users decide if they want to receive them.
Now that we talked about those different types of mails, it's good to mention that you should separate them in terms of:
- the IP Address you're using for sending out those mails
- the subdomain you're using for your email address
It's in the nature of Broadcast mails that they are more likely to get marked as spam as they go out to a much higher amount of people and they're easier to "annoy" them.
You don't want to hurt the deliverability of your Transactional mails, so be sure to separate them.
You can also separate them into even more buckets, like have own subdomains for your E-Mail drips.
For example you could use:
- info@snappify.io for Transactional Mails
- info@newsletter.snappify.io for Broadcast Mails (your Newsletter)
- info@tips.snappify.io for Email Drips
Email Marketing is a broad topic and I'm also just getting started.
I learned very much from the Postmark Documentation & Guides and can highly recommend checking out their Resources as they are packed with tons of valuable information. (not sponsored, just my opinion)
That said, I also want to share a small win: we sent out one newly designed transactional mail to one of our churned users .. and we received feedback!
That's the first time we received feedback from a churning user since months 🙌
If you have anything to add, pls do so, I'm also still a beginner in this topic.
I'm going to cover more learnings in the future, also on Twitter.
