Transactional email is triggered by a user action (receipts, password resets, alerts) and is exempt from most marketing consent rules. Marketing email promotes products and requires consent and unsubscribe links.
What good looks like#
- Done: Send transactional mail from a dedicated subdomain (for example mail.yourdomain.com) or separate stream.
- Done: Send marketing from a different subdomain (news.yourdomain.com).
- Done: Keep promotional content out of transactional messages to preserve their exemption.
- Done: Apply DMARC to the organizational domain so both subdomains are covered.
What bad looks like#
- Seen in audits: Adding upsell banners to receipts, which reclassifies them as marketing under many laws.
- Seen in audits: Using one shared IP pool for both streams.
How to move from bad to good#
Work through the good list in order and re-verify after each change. Most teams find one or two items from the bad list already present; fixing those usually produces the largest improvement.
Frequently asked questions#
Do transactional emails need an unsubscribe link?
Not under CAN-SPAM if purely transactional. Gmail's bulk-sender rules still expect one-click unsubscribe for anything sent at volume, so many senders include it anyway.