Marketing emails
What is a marketing email?
Businesses send marketing emails to promote their products or services. They’re sent with the intention to sell or build brand awareness and engagement. An effective digital marketing tool, these emails target potential customers who may convert or existing customers who may repurchase.
How are marketing emails different from transactional emails?
Many businesses confuse marketing emails and transactional emails to their detriment. Here are a few characteristics that set them apart.
Purpose
The intention of marketing emails is to promote a product or service or to initiate an engagement that will result in a sale. Transactional emails relay information or acknowledgement of an action.
Content
Marketing emails are bulk emails. They often carry the same information or content (like a year-end offer) to all of the recipients on the list. Transactional emails carry personalized information that will vary based on the recipient and the action they perform.
Trigger
Marketing emails don't work based on triggers. They’re often scheduled to be sent at a specific time. Transactional emails are automated and sent immediately after the user performs an action.
Optimization
Marketing email delivery is optimized for engagement. The time and delivery is designed so that it reaches the user when they’re most active online and likely to open the email. Transactional email delivery is optimized for speed and inbox placement. The goal is to deliver the information to the user as soon as they finish performing the action, without any delay.
Common examples of marketing emails
Here are some examples of marketing emails often sent by businesses:
Seasonal sale promotions
Exclusive discount offers
Product launch emails
Newsletters
Holiday emails
Upsell or cross-sell emails
Event announcements
Webinar invites
Ensuring good deliverability of emails
Marketing emails and transactional emails are both important for a business because they serve different purposes. While there are best practices to ensure good delivery of both, it’s in the best interest of every business to separate their marketing email sending and transactional email sending. The delivery of each category of emails requires different tools and attention. Employing the right tool with the right features and delivery tactics is important to the deliverability of both marketing and transactional emails.
Marketing emails, though important, aren’t triggered by the user, so they run the risk of being marked as spam. When transactional emails and marketing emails are sent from the same service, if marketing emails are perceived as spam by recipient servers, it’s likely that the important transactional emails that the customers are expecting will also be marked as spam. To eliminate this risk, using a separate transactional email service is essential.