Transactional email overview
Must-send mail, and how it differs from marketing.
A transactional email is a must-send: a receipt, an order confirmation, a password reset, a booking notice. It is authored like any other template, but Pombo treats it differently from marketing.
Walkthrough: Wire up transactional email goes from a template to a live send from your backend.
Where it lives
Transactional templates have category: "transactional" and name themselves
with a key. They're kept out of the campaign and sequence template pickers,
and shown on their own page under Build, Transactional, which also lists what
each one has sent.
How suppression differs
Suppression is keyed on the address, and only a hard signal stops a send:
- Unsubscribed, still sends. Opting out of marketing is not opting out of a receipt, and CAN-SPAM agrees. This is the whole reason transactional email is separate from sequences.
- Hard-bounced or complained, refused. The address is dead or the person reported the organization. Sending again burns deliverability.
- Not a contact, still sends. Transactional mail routinely goes to people who were never on a list.
The footer carries your postal address but no unsubscribe link.
How one is sent
Three ways, covered in sending by key:
- an explicit API call or agent tool call, addressed by key
- bound to a custom event, so posting the event sends it
- for Pombo's own system mail (password resets, invitations), automatically