Transactional email is a one-to-one message a person needs because of something they did, like a receipt or a password reset. Marketing email promotes or informs, goes to many people, and must let them unsubscribe.
How it works
The difference is the message's main purpose. Under the US CAN-SPAM Act, a message is transactional or relationship mail only if it mainly confirms a transaction the person already agreed to, gives warranty, recall or safety information, reports a change to their account or subscription, or delivers something they bought. The FTC reads those categories narrowly. Everything that promotes a product or service is commercial.
- Transactional: an order confirmation, a password reset, a shipping notice.
- Marketing: a newsletter, a sale announcement, a welcome series, a follow-up after a purchase.
A message that mixes both is judged by its subject line and by what comes first. A receipt that opens with a promotion counts as marketing.
Why it matters
- Different rules. Marketing email needs an opt-out and your postal address. Transactional mail is exempt from most of CAN-SPAM, as long as its routing information is honest.
- Unsubscribes apply differently. Someone who left your newsletter still needs their password reset.
- Separate reputations. Postmark keeps the two on separate message streams with separate IP pools, so the reputation of one doesn't drag on the other. Google's guidelines say not to mix promotions into receipts, and to use a different From address for each kind of message.
How Mimeo handles it
Mimeo is for marketing and lifecycle email to your opt-in list: broadcasts, sequences and flow emails. It treats all of them as marketing mail. The suppression guard checks every send, each one carries the one-click unsubscribe headers, and on Postmark they ride your Broadcasts stream (Postmark setup). The default layout's footer carries the unsubscribe link and your mailing address, as {{ unsubscribe_url }} and {{ mailing_address }} (Layouts).
Only Mimeo's own operator mail, such as password resets for your Mimeo login and alert email, goes out in transactional mode, on Postmark's outbound stream. Receipts and account email for your customers come from your app or store. A purchase event sent to Mimeo can still start a follow-up flow, which is marketing and respects unsubscribes. See Mimeo terms for message streams in Mimeo's own words.
- CAN-SPAM Act: a compliance guide for business. Checked .
- Message streams. Checked .
- Email sender guidelines. Checked .
- Postmark setup. Checked .