Transactional vs. Promotional Email: When to Use Each and Email Examples

Our inboxes are filled with all sorts of messages from every corner of our lives, from the personal to the promotional. To stand out amidst the noise, marketers need to be savvy and use best practices to create email campaigns that add value to customers’ days and make a meaningful business impact.

To help you elevate your email marketing strategy, let’s take a look at the two main email types that brands send—promotional emails vs. transactional emails, also referred to as commercial vs. transactional emails or marketing vs. transactional emails.

In this guide, we’ll explore how to make the most of both types of campaigns, share examples of both types of emails, and offer insights into how to send more effective email campaigns across the board.

Promotional Emails and Examples

Promotional emails feature a commercial or marketing message focused on driving purchases or other conversions and can be triggered or sent manually. These emails require a clear call to action to convince customers to take the next step and convert. They’re typically campaigns that, if executed properly, can help generate revenue and give customers a reason to keep using your products or services.

While promotional emails do have the ability to deepen customer engagement and retention, you don’t want to get in the habit of creating an offer to increase retention. To succeed over the long haul, you need customers to genuinely connect with your brand—not just stick around waiting for the cheapest price. Creating frequent promotions with the sole purpose of increasing retention may prove to be costly in the long run.

Our Braze Inspiration Guide is packed with dozens of ideas for promotional campaigns your brand can send to deepen your customer relationships beyond sales and discounts, including by creating brand value campaigns and product launch campaigns, like the examples shown below.

Other common types of promotional emails include:

• Free trial campaigns
• App rating campaigns
• App download campaigns
• Initial value campaigns
• Referral campaigns
• Discount and sales campaigns
• Seasonal promotions
• Upsell campaigns
• Flash sale campaigns
• Subscription renewal campaigns
• Cross-sell campaigns
• Back-in-stock, price-drop campaigns
• Loyalty enrollment campaigns
• Product launch campaigns
• Brand value campaigns
• General education campaigns
• Newsletter campaigns
• …and more

Transactional Emails and Examples

Transactional emails are generally triggered and sent programmatically. More simply, these emails are sent after customers complete (or don’t complete) actions. For example, transactional emails are usually sent after completing a purchase, resetting a password, or abandoning an online shopping cart. A big misperception is that transactional emails are emails for eCommerce transactions only (note the word “transactional”). While it’s easy to see the confusion, these types of emails aren’t just for when customers purchase something (though eCommerce companies do tend to use transactional email the most).

Common types of transactional emails include:

• Password resets
• Abandoned cart campaigns
• Profile change notifications
• Balance updates
• Email address confirmations
• Invoices
• Reminders

Transactional emails are unique in that they provide critical information to customers while giving marketers the opportunity to provide more value through content, cross-sell and feature other products, gather feedback, or drive acquisition through referrals and sharing buttons. Customers have become accustomed to receiving certain transactional emails after they complete certain actions, which is why an email strategy that includes transactional email is essential to retaining customers. Fail to trigger an expected account alert, and you may scare or confuse your audience.

How to Improve Transactional and Promotional Emails

For both your transactional and promotional emails, you want to ensure to:

• Personalize messages to your customers’ past purchase behaviors or shopping preferences
• Track the performance of messages through attribution models that you create
• Run segment-specific A/B tests to compare the effectiveness of different variables
• Reach buyers at their specific stage of the customer lifecycle (See our customer lifecycle marketing guide for best practices for how to do this)
• Use a marketing automation system to trigger campaigns based on actions that your users are taking

Want to dig even deeper into different types of email campaigns? Check out the Braze Email Inspiration Guide.

Even More About Marketing vs. Transactional Emails—Answers to Your FAQs

What are the primary goals of commercial vs. transactional emails?

Brands send commercial emails to drive customer engagement to encourage users to take action, whether that’s to raise awareness or to fuel down-the-funnel conversions, such as purchases. These are designed to inform users about ways they can add value to their lives, whether that’s saving money, claiming a special offer, being among the first to try out a new product or feature, or becoming a subscriber or loyalty program member.

Transactional emails, on the other hand, are sent automatically after a customer has already taken a given action. These messages usually confirm that the transaction has successfully occurred and include details about the transaction, such as a receipt, tracking information, reservation details and directions, etc.

How do transactional emails enhance customer trust?

By proactively sending transactional emails in the moment when customers complete a given action, such as creating an account, joining a group, becoming a subscriber, or making an appointment, companies can strengthen customer trust by providing the information customers need related to these transactions right when they need it.

What should brands consider when creating call to actions in promotional emails?

For the most effective promotional email CTAs, remember to:

• Keep the CTA concise
• Use A/B and multivariate testing to measure the impact of different variants of the CTA across a variety of variables, including the CTA’s copy, color, shape, size, and placement
• Avoid including competing calls to action in one email
• Take advantage of solutions like Braze AI Copywriting Assistant natural language generation tool—powered by ChatGPT—for creative inspiration for CTA suggestions

How can transactional emails be optimized for cross-selling?

Transactional emails can be optimized for cross-selling by including relevant offers that relate to the transaction a customer has just completed. For instance, if the email is confirming a user has successfully signed an online petition or donated to a fundraiser, the transactional email can include a call-out for related petitions or fundraisers that might also be of interest to the user to check out.

How can brands balance promotional offers within transactional messages?

It’s important not to go overboard when including promotional offers within transactional messages. Take a thoughtful approach and:

• Remember not to confuse the reader or take away from the primary purpose of the transactional email
• A/B test different versions of your transactional email, including a variant that does include cross-selling and one that doesn’t

What is the role of automation in managing transactional and promotional emails?

Marketing automation platforms like Braze enable companies to engage customers across channels at scale, using dynamic segmentation and personalization engines to automatically send transactional and promotional campaigns to the right users at the right time. Automation tools help marketers sort through their audiences to create targeted groups of users to send tailored emails and other types of messaging campaigns based on up-to-the-minute real-time behavior and data.

Campaigns powered by real-time data and insights are more likely to drive engagement, including opens, clicks, and conversions, compared to generic batch-and-blast emails. As such, using marketing automation to manage transactional and promotional campaigns is an effective way for businesses to fuel sustainable growth.

In addition, data automation capabilities can help marketers automate decision-making processes to create more engaging experiences within seconds. The Braze platform’s data automation features enable brands to predict customer behaviors, personalize campaigns, curate content, generate art and copy, and automate A/B testing, all of which can result in more optimized marketing campaigns at scale.

How frequently should promotional emails be sent to avoid customer fatigue?

Braze research on the optimal send frequency for most types of brands reveals that the monthly email volume that results in the best open and click rates is around eight to 10 emails per month.

What makes transactional emails more time sensitive than promotional ones?

Transactional emails are by nature messages that get triggered in real time in response to customer activity. Promotional emails can be time sensitive if they’re tied to a limited-time offer, related to real-time events, or take place during a specific timeframe; however, many types of promotional emails, such as educational campaigns or referral campaigns, are evergreen and are relevant no matter when they get sent.

What are common mistakes to avoid in promotional email campaigns?

Here are some of the most common and crucial mistakes to avoid when creating promotional email campaigns:

• Not having a clearly defined goal for your promotional email campaigns: Setting goals will help you assess whether your marketing outreach is delivering your intended results.
• Not segmenting your emails: The more you can customize your emails for a specific audience, the greater your chances of delivering a campaign that resonates with that particular group.
• Not monitoring your key email marketing metrics: Paying attention to non-open rates, email click rates, email bounce rates, email complaint rates, and email conversion rates is critical for maintaining the health of your email marketing program.

How does email segmentation impact the effectiveness of transactional and promotional emails?

There are several benefits for brands that use real-time segmentation. This is the most accurate type of segmentation that occurs as soon as a customer carries out a given action, such as completing a purchase or favoriting an item. Using real-time segmentation to send tailored transactional and promotional emails can help you:

• Drive stronger customer retention outcomes
• Increase your acquisition optimization
• Lower your marketing costs
• Drive efficiencies and speed time to launch thanks to automated workflows
• …all of which can lead to more effective transactional and promotional emails

Brands that use segmentation, including behavioral segmentation, are more likely to deliver relevant content to their users and can expect to see higher conversion and retention rates. Another advantage? Researchers at McKinsey & Company have found that personalization efforts can boost revenue by 10 to 15%.

Do other channels have transactional and promotional messages?

Yes, transactional messaging can be sent via push notifications, SMS, in-app messages, and Content Cards. Even WhatsApp, one of the newest messaging channels, allows brands to send utility messages, which are the equivalent of transactional emails and can be sent during the purchase process and post-conversion to share updates related to customers’ transactions.