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Transactional or marketing? The line that changes how your email is treated
A password reset and a sale announcement can come from the same app and still follow different rules.
Email providers and laws treat email by its purpose, not its sender. The two big buckets are transactional and marketing, and mixing them is one of the most common ways to get into trouble.
Transactional
- Triggered by something the person did: a login code, a receipt, a shipping update, a missed-payment notice.
- Expected by the reader, usually with no marketing content.
- Sent one recipient at a time, and not a bulk list.
Marketing
- Newsletters, promotions, announcements and anything that asks for money in the body.
- Needs consent in many places, and a visible opt-out.
- Sent to lists, usually through a campaign tool.
Where people get caught
- A receipt with a "10 percent off next time" banner. Some rules treat that as marketing.
- A login code email that suddenly carries a product offer.
- A list of users who only signed up for alerts, now receiving a newsletter.
The simple test
- Would the reader be upset if this arrived with no offer in it? If not, it is probably marketing.