What are the types of transactional emails?

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With more and more aspects of everyday life becoming virtual, a strong online presence has become crucial for most businesses to succeed, and one important factor in building a strong online presence is sending transactional emails.

In my previous blog, we saw an overview of what transactional emails are and how they are different from marketing emails. In this blog, we'll see the different types of transactional emails you will come across. Depending on the type of business you run, the transactional emails you send can vary.

The most common transactional emails can be broadly classified into a few groups based on their purpose:

Purchase- and subscription-related emails

The most common type of transactional emails we come across are related to purchases or subscriptions. These emails usually contain information about a purchase or subscription that a customer has made online.

Order confirmation emails and invoice emails for online purchases fall under this category. Similarly, subscription confirmation emails and sign-up confirmation emails can be grouped into this type of transactional emails.

 User-requested emails

This type of transactional email includes emails that carry information that has been explicitly requested by the customer from an application or service. Speed of delivery for these emails is crucial since the customer typically expects the email to arrive within seconds of taking an action.

Password-reset emails and OTP emails are the most common examples of user-requested transactional emails. Other examples of these are user verification emails during sign-up or bank statement emails requested by customers.

Account-related emails

All emails that relay information about an account to the user can be classified into this type of transactional email. These emails keep the customer in the loop about important aspects of their account.

Login attempt notifications, trial expiration alerts, and payment reminders are some common emails of this type. Email sent based on the customer behavior, like reactivation emails and abandoned cart emails also fall into this group.

Activity notification emails

This type of transactional email is used to alert users of activities related to them. In most cases, these emails are notifications of an action taken by someone other than the user but are in some way related to the user.

In the case of social media, these could be status update emails, event reminders, or comment notifications. Shipping update emails for online orders are also some of the common examples of this category.

Support and feedback emails

While most transactional emails are sent from the business to the user, some transactional emails are sent to the businesses based on a user's action. These emails can be used by the customer to share feedback, raise issues, or contact customer service.

When a user submits a support request, the information is sent as a support email to the technical team. Similarly, feedback forms and contact forms displayed on websites also trigger emails to the relevant teams.

Regardless of the purpose of the various types of transactional emails, all of them are crucial for a business. In the next blog, we'll talk more about how transactional emails can benefit your business, and how to pick the right transactional email service for you.

In the meantime, we would love to hear your thoughts and questions about transactional emails so we can have them answered in our upcoming blogs. Leave your feedback in the comments section below!

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Until next time, stay safe and stay happy!