Back to 'Product'What is the Difference Between Transactional and Broadcast Emails?
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After adding your domain to the Lettermint dashboard, you can start sending emails. To ensure proper email delivery and maintain our service standards, it is important to understand the difference between Transactional and Broadcast emails. By delivering emails correctly, we prevent them from ending up in the spam folder and ensure they always reach the recipient's inbox.
As mentioned above, Lettermint divides emails into two categories:
We will discuss the differences between these two types of emails below.
Transactional Emails
Transactional emails are important messages automatically sent in response to a user action. For transactional emails, it is crucial that they are delivered to the recipient's inbox within seconds. In most cases, these emails contain information that is critical for the user to act quickly.
Examples of transactional emails include:
- Order confirmation emails
- Password reset emails
- Account registration emails
- Shipping confirmations
- Invoices and payment confirmations
- Notifications about important updates or changes to a service
- Reservation or appointment confirmations
- Subscription or membership confirmations
- Account settings change confirmations
As you can see from the above overview, these emails are meant specifically for the recipient and not for others.
Broadcast Emails
As the name suggests, broadcast emails are aimed at a broader audience. These emails are often used for marketing purposes and are sent to a large group of recipients. This is in contrast to transactional emails, which are targeted at a single recipient.
Examples of broadcast emails include:
- Newsletters
- Promotions and offers
- Event invitations
- Product launches
- Surveys
Broadcast emails are often less urgent than transactional emails and can be sent at a later time.
Why Do We Make This Distinction?
As mentioned in the introduction, we ensure that emails reach the recipient's inbox and not the spam folder. We achieve this by treating both types of emails differently with a separate infrastructure.
This way, we guarantee that transactional emails are always delivered within seconds (Time to Inbox) and do not experience delays caused by large campaigns sent via our broadcast infrastructure.
Broadcast vs Transactional Emails
| Broadcast | Transactional | |
|---|---|---|
| Recipient | Multiple | Single |
| Purpose | Marketing / promotions | Specific / personal |
| Examples | Newsletters, promo campaigns | Order confirmations, password resets |
| Time to Inbox | Minutes / hours (depending on audience size) | Seconds |
| Send Time | Scheduled | Immediate |
How Do I Set This Up?
When creating a project in Lettermint, two Routes are automatically created: Outgoing Transactional Email and Outgoing Broadcast Email.
When sending emails through Lettermint, the Outgoing Transactional Email Route is used automatically. This means you do not need to make any additional settings to send transactional emails.
To send broadcast emails, you need to use the Outgoing Broadcast Email Route. You can specify this via the API, SMTP, or other integrations when sending the email. For more information, please refer to the Lettermint documentation.
Which Route Should I Use?
Not sure if you're sending a transactional or broadcast email? Feel free to send us a message via the support feature in the dashboard. We'll be happy to assist you and ensure you use the correct route for your emails.
