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Create, design, and send a transactional email template
Create, design, and send a transactional email template

Learn to build and send transactional email templates in EasyEditor.

Gareth Burroughes avatar
Written by Gareth Burroughes
Updated over a week ago

Transactional email is your non-marketing email, for example password resets or order confirmations.

You can make transactional email templates in EasyEditor in the same way that you design your marketing emails, and send them by using SMTP or the API.

By creating your transactional email templates in EasyEditor, you get all the design benefits that go with it, which includes choosing from our free templates, uploading your own template, and using all of the EasyEditor features. For example, if your brand colours or design change, you can instantly update your transactional email to the latest version. You can also add placeholders to personalise your transactional emails.


Before you start

Things you need to know:

  • Don't include marketing content in transactional emails
    Since transactional emails don't contain an unsubscribe link, you don't want to upset your customers and subscribers with marketing content they didn't ask for. Your sending reputation is at serious risk if you send marketing content in a transactional email.
    To learn more about your sender reputation, check out the Understanding your sender reputation article.

  • You cannot use emojis in the subject line of transactional emails.


Create transactional email templates as a triggered campaign

Transactional email templates must be created in EasyEditor as triggered campaigns. Triggered campaigns can then be sent to individual contacts by the methods mentioned above.


Design a transactional email template in EasyEditor

Transactional email templates can support some building blocks and link types, but not others. it's important to be aware of what your transactional email campaigns do and don’t support.

Supported features

You can use these features in your transactional email template:

✔️ Link clicks

To find reporting for link clicks and other metrics for triggered campaigns that are sent as transactional emails go to the Channel menu and select Analytics > Channel analytics > Dashboards: Transactional email.

✔️ Personalisation

You can add personalisation to your transactional email template using transactional email placeholders, for example, '@FIRSTNAME@'. Although the placeholders look the same, don’t confuse this with EasyEditor personalisation; this uses contact data fields and isn't related.

Unsupported features

You can’t use these features in your transactional email template; the transactional email won’t send if it includes any of the following:

Building blocks

Links

❌ RSS feeds

❌ Sharing

❌ Social links

❌ Dynamic content

❌ External dynamic content

❌ Advanced personalisation blocks

❌ Forward to a friend

❌ View in browser

❌ Double opt-in

❌ Unsubscribe*
*This is an exception. It’s important that you read the Include a mandatory unsubscribe link section in this article.

If you try to send a triggered campaign as a transactional email that contains one of these unsupported features you will see the error ERROR_CAMPAIGN_CONTAINS_UNSUPPORTED_BLOCKS.

Remember that you will need to check the plain text version of your triggered campaign too.


Include a mandatory unsubscribe link

Unsubscribe links aren’t supported in transactional email templates, however, your template must have one to save the template in EasyEditor. The unsubscribe link is automatically removed when it’s sent by SMTP or the API.

Keep your unsubscribe link by itself

All content is deleted if you add it to an unsubscribe link container because the container contents are removed when the send happens. Therefore you should keep your unsubscribe link separate from the rest of your content.

Your transactional email is created as a triggered campaign. This means it can be reused later for non-transactional email purposes, for example, in a program. The campaign must include an unsubscribe link if this happens.


Send transactional email templates

You must create your transactional email as a triggered campaign in EasyEditor to send transactional email campaigns. The transactional email is sent by using SMTP or our API; these both use the triggered campaign ID to send the content.

Personalisation

Personalization can be included in a transactional email by using transactional email personalisation. Placeholders are used in the email, for example, 'Hi @FIRSTNAME@'. Then, when SMTP or the API is used to send the triggered campaign, personalisation key-value pairs need to be included in your code.

Example:
"PersonalisationValues": [{ Name: "FIRSTNAME" , Value: "John" }, { Name: "LASTNAME" , Value: "Smith" }]

The value for the matching placeholder name is pulled into the campaign as it is sent.

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