Whether you’re a budding enthusiast just beginning your journey or an experienced marketer seeking to develop your strategies, understanding the different types of emails that can be used when you are communicating with your contacts is vital. In this article, we’ll explore the two primary email categories which you’ll work with in Mautic: marketing and transactional emails. 

We will explore their purposes, significant distinctions between the two, and the importance of the changes coming with Mautic 5.0 and later, where you will be able to send transactional emails even when contacts have opted out of receiving marketing communications. So let’s embark on this adventure and unlock the wonders of email marketing together!

Unveiling the two sides: marketing and transactional emails

Marketing emails: the essence of promoting

Marketing emails serve as potent tools for businesses to connect with their audience, build brand awareness, and drive conversions. They encompass a wide range of email campaigns, including newsletters, promotional offers, product updates, and customer surveys. 

The primary objective of marketing emails is to engage subscribers, nurture leads, and generate conversions. Conversions might mean purchasing something, but equally it could be signing up for an event, attending a webinar, or any other action that you want the contact to take. The important thing here is that you’re trying to promote a specific action or goal to your contact.

Transactional emails: the fundamental pillars of communication

While marketing emails focus on promotion – like the initial, exciting stages of a relationship, where attraction and curiosity are sparked – transactional emails reflect the ongoing, reliable communication and commitment that lay the foundation for a long-lasting customer relationship.

Transactional emails are generally triggered by specific interactions or transactions between the customer and the business. Examples of transactional emails might include order confirmations, shipping notifications, password resets, re-validating consent to contact and account-related updates. 

Transactional emails are often personalized, and provide essential information to customers, enhancing their overall experience with your brand.

The difference between marketing and transactional emails

In summary, transactional emails differ from marketing emails in three key ways:

• Purpose: Transactional emails aim to facilitate a transaction or provide information directly related to a contact’s interaction with a business. Marketing emails, on the other hand, are designed to promote products, services, or events to the contact.
   
• Content: Transactional emails are typically triggered by a specific action and are personalized accordingly, containing specific details relevant to the customer’s action, such as purchase receipts or password reset links. Marketing emails often encompass a broader range of content and while there may be personalization, in general they are tailored to engage a larger audience.
   
• Consent: Transactional emails are considered ‘transactional’ because they do not require explicit consent from the recipient, and therefore do not need to provide an unsubscribe link. By contrast, marketing emails must comply with spam regulations, requiring recipients to provide opt-in consent to receive promotional content and be able to remove themselves from receiving such content.

Working with consent

Email marketers shoulder the responsibility of adhering to legal requirements such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Anti-Spam regulations. GDPR governs the protection of personal data, ensuring that individuals have control over their information and how it is used. When sending marketing emails, businesses must obtain explicit consent from recipients.

However, transactional emails are treated differently under GDPR. As they are crucial for completing a transaction or delivering vital information, they are considered a legitimate interest of both the business and the customer. Therefore, they can be sent to recipients even if they have previously opted out of marketing communications.

As a result, transactional emails typically tend to be delivered into the main inbox rather than the promotions section, for example, because they are deemed to be important and individual, rather than promotional and bulk mailed.

Transactional emails in Mautic 5.0

From Mautic 5.0 onwards, transactional emails will be sent even if the contact has opted out of email communication. They will no longer have an unsubscribe header – because it’s not relevant for a contact to unsubscribe from essential transactional emails.

To maintain compliance, it’s crucial to ensure that when you are sending transactional emails, they are primarily used to serve their intended purpose. 

Marketers should limit promotional content within transactional emails to avoid blurring the lines with marketing messages, where consent is required. By providing only relevant, necessary information, you can leverage the power of transactional emails effectively as part of your marketing strategy.

If you try to send marketing emails as transactional emails – for example to circumvent landing in the Promotions tab or remove the unsubscribe options – it might work for a short while but you will eventually be flagged by your contacts as spam or caught and flagged by email providers’ systems. This can result in catastrophic damage to your deliverability, which can be extremely damaging and difficult to recover from. Don’t do it!

Understanding the potential of transactional emails

Enhancing user experience

Transactional emails offer invaluable touchpoints to build and nurture customer relationships. While marketing emails focus on the broader audience, transactional emails provide personalized interactions directly tied to a customer’s actions. By delivering exceptional transactional experiences, you foster stronger connections and amplify brand loyalty.

Seizing upselling and cross-selling opportunities:

While we have mentioned that you must be careful not to send marketing content as transactional emails, there is some leeway when it comes to including small amounts of highly relevant promotional content within a transactional email.

For example, including personalized product recommendations in a shipping confirmation email can entice customers to explore complementary items or upgrades. Leveraging transactional emails carefully and strategically allows you to maximize revenue potential while providing the all important additional value to customers.

Showcasing a consistent brand identity

Every email, whether marketing or transactional, provides a chance to showcase your brand’s identity. Consistency in design, tone, and formatting across all email types reinforces your brand image. From the logo placement to the choice of language, transactional emails should align with your brand’s essence, leaving a lasting impression on recipients.

Conclusion

As we conclude this expedition into the realm of email marketing, we’ve explored the pivotal roles played by marketing and transactional emails. 

Marketing emails drive engagement and conversions, while transactional emails facilitate seamless transactions and foster customer relationships. 

Understanding the nuances of transactional emails, complying with legal regulations like GDPR, and leveraging their potential for enhancing user experiences and brand loyalty will empower you on your email marketing journey. 

So, embrace the power of emails, and unlock new possibilities in expanding your business horizons!

P.S. If you want some inspiration of great examples of transactional email designs, check out this blog post: https://www.brevo.com/blog/transactional-email-design-examples/

Are you afraid that your email marketing efforts using Mautic will be affected by spam bots? Wish that there was another alternative that didn’t involve CAPTCHAs? Research shows that CAPTCHAs are having a negative impact on conversions.

The short story is that CAPTCHAs kill conversions. (source)

The pain is even bigger if you have a high traffic website and use external email services like Amazon SES, Sendgrid and Sparkpost. If you don’t control these spam bots, you won’t be in compliance with their spam rules.

You know what? You aren’t alone.

Honeypot Method

There is a way to get past this struggle, even if you are not a developer. The solution is to implement an approach called the Honeypot method, in your Mautic forms.

First, login to your Mautic instance. Go to Settings (cog icon), then Custom Fields. In the Custom Field window, add a new field.

In the Label field lets call this honey, click Save & Close, and continue to the next step.

The Setup

Now, let’s go to the forms we need to protect using the honeypot method. I would suggest going to the forms that are more prone to attack.

Add a new email field in the forms and select call it email2 and map that field to the honey field we created.

Now in Mautic v2.8+ we have a new field type called HTML Area, we’re going to use this field and add the follow code in the HTML area;

This code will make the email2 field invisible to the human eye, but not for the spam bots.

NOTE: You have to replace the formname and fieldlabel with the form name without space and the field label in your honeypot filed you put in your Mautic.

Another approach to hiding the field would be to specify the Field Container Attribute of the email2 field you want to hide as:

style="display:none"

Now let’s start eliminating spam bots.

Eliminate the Spam

Go to all the campaigns you have attached to a Campaign form;

Now adding this condition at the first step of the campaign will check to see if the person that submits the form has information in the field “honey”. If the field is empty it is likely a real person. If it’s not empty, it is a spam-bot and we are going to delete it.

NOTE: If you use a Standalone Form and you have the action to send email to user you MUST disable this and create a campaign associate with this Standalone Form and replicate the step above.

Using the honeypot method will help you stop spam bots and the negative effect they have on your email marketing activities.

Mautic’s Rod Martin developed a short video tutorial to walk through this approach step-by-step;

Because of Mautic’s robust workflow, there are a number of different ways to accomplish any given task. This is simply one approach. Comment below if you know of others.

The Mautic community is filled with incredible individuals with a variety of backgrounds and experiences. We believe that each perspective represents unique value to the broader community. If you’re interested in becoming a contributor to our blog, please contact us.

Undeliverable Email

But is our email marketing campaign being received? So many articles (like this) have been written to help us get our emails where they need to go. Unfortunately reaching the inbox is now more challenging than it has ever been. According to Return Path;

Regardless of the reason, declining inbox placement rates represent a serious concern for marketers. With one out of every five emails failing to land in the inbox, brands are missing out on a full 20% of their opportunities to connect with customers and earn their business.

There are many factors that impact whether our information/offer will get to our intended audience. SendGrid outlines four key components to determine if your email marketing campaign will be delivered. They are;

• Message Infrastructure Health
• Message Content
• Sender History and Filtering
• Receiving System’s Availability

Interestingly enough, you can impact 3/4 of these factors. Can you guess which ones? The only item that is truly out of your control is the receiving system’s availability. All other elements you have the ability to impact or control. It’s not by manipulating spam filters or blasting out 5 times as many emails in one week to gain a better return.

Greater Email Marketing Campaign Returns

So how do we capitalize on the missing 20% and maximize the existing 80%? I’m glad you asked. There are many tactics that will help you achieve this end. But this post is not your typical how-to. I’d like to step back a moment and look at an approach that will guide your email marketing strategy.

The 2015 Deliverability Benchmark Report produced by Return Path, states that the greatest email delivery rate was achieved by industries that relied the heaviest on customer relationships. Think about that for a moment. The greatest returns are not achieved by the best technology, the most creative campaigns, or the highest budget. These results were due to the development of deep customer relationships.

So if the key to getting your email marketing campaign delivered is deep customer relationships, how do we foster them? As we connect with our customers and influence our buyers via email, we must consider the following elements to effectively reach them.

• Trust: We know that all relationships are built on trust. Why is it so difficult to realize? Because trust is developed over time and requires many interactions. It requires patience. Industries like retail, health & beauty and apparel achieve stronger placement because they are typically high-touch environments. Real interactions with real people provide greater levels of trust. If you want to connect with your audience, humanize your interactions. Make it personal. Understand the need in the context of their environment, and deliver value in a meaningful way. John Kottcamp says it best;
  

  Companies that excel at delivering rich, personalized online experiences not only produce more loyal customers but also outperform their competition on the stock market, according to a recent five-year study conducted by Forrester Research. (source: MarketingProfs)

  Personalized means more than tagging a first name in the greeting. It means gaining a deeper understanding of where they have visited, what their interests are, and connecting your value to that information in an authentic, meaningful way.

• Analysis: Developing trust in a relationship is like strengthening a bridge between you and your customer. It starts on shaky ground and then begins to gain strength as you continue to provide value according to their need in the moment. As you interact with your customer, it is important that you never stop listening. Listening or analyzing the feedback they provide in the form of interactions with you and your brand. This requires time and talent. The proper analysis of traffic and customer data will further ensure that you are a trusted provider. Data is a double-edged sword. It can make you a relevant star, or it can make your brand feel disconnected and irrelevant. Which leads us to our final point.
• Relevance: I was at the local coffee shop the other day, chatting with a friend. We were having a discussion about how many vacationers were stopping in. A gentleman overheard our conversation and tried to make a joke, but it turned out to be an awkward moment as we didn’t understand what he was referring to. This was not about his joke, but about the fact that in that moment we could not relate what he was saying to our conversation. This made his joke awkward and irrelevant. The point is, if you want to develop trust with your audience, you must be able to relate to them in the proper context.
  

  “Achieving such personalization requires knowing deep context: not just a customer’s demographic data but also the time and location she accessed content, the search terms she used to find it, the referring site that directed her toward it, and—most important—her behavior before, during, and after consuming it…” (source: John Kottenkamp)

This approach works. Maximizing each email marketing campaign begins with content that builds trust, is built on proper analysis and is relevant to the customer.

Relevancy is the marketer’s secret weapon, and the fastest path to revenue. Emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened and marketers have found a 760% increase in email revenue from segmented campaigns. (source: Campaign Source)

In summary, the ability to deliver your email marketing campaign is not based on whether you can sidestep spam filters. It is in your ability to develop trust with your customers. If you can not do this with confidence, take the time you need to develop your marketing and communication strategy with these important elements at the helm.

These recommendations are simply the tip of the iceberg. What are other ways you’ve discovered help your email marketing campaign get delivered? Share them in the comments below!

Your readers have inboxes just like you. They have rules, labels, and spam filters just like you do. Here are 5 best tips for writing emails. I won’t guarantee that you’ll see 100% open rates on your email as a result of these 5 tips but they are a great starting point.

1. Be Short

You don’t have to write a novel when composing an email. Think about the emails you like to receive when they are short and to the point you can very quickly skim the contents and determine the importance of the letter. When you’re writing your emails to your audience keep this in mind. They want to be able to read it quickly. Don’t reveal too much information (we’ll talk more about this later).

2. Be Specific

There’s nothing worse than trying to guess at the purpose of an email. If you don’t understand why the email has been sent you’re unlikely to read it or take any action as a result. Create your emails with purpose. Identify a handful (at most) of items you want to share and give a clear specific action you want the reader to take. (e.g. Click this link to read this article! or maybe Leave a comment here)

3. Be Consistent

Don’t share conflicting information. You don’t want to appear dishonest in your communication and you don’t want to say one thing in your email and another on your website. This is especially true with b2b email marketing where all your emails are tied to a corporate or business website. You have to make sure you are consistent, in your voice, your tone, and your content. Consistency encourages trust.

4. Be Relevant

Ok, another personal story. I get emails every day on all types of things: products, services, and more. Some of them are completely and totally irrelevant to me. (No, I don’t need to volume pricing on air conditioning units.) You should be using your marketing automation software to make your b2b email marketing effective and relevant. You do this by correctly building your lead lists, and your lead profiles. Managing your leads correctly will let you target them with relevant information in your emails.

5. Be Interesting

The last tip for writing better b2b emails is a simple one, in fact it’s almost more of a personal plea. Please be interesting! Your readers will appreciate your emails so much more if they are witty, entertaining, and interesting instead of just another boring, drab regurgitation of information. This is a harder concept in b2b email marketing since the topics are more business oriented, but if you have correctly identified your voice you can always fine ways to be interesting.

These are my best 5 tips for better b2b email marketing. I’m sure there are more that are good and I’m sure you also have some that you have found to be important when formulating your b2b email marketing campaigns and implementing a strategy for email success. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. Have you found something that works well for increasing opens? Let’s work together to rid the world of the pointless emails at least since it doesn’t appear we’ll be free from email any time soon!