Transactional emails
Transactional emails are automated 1-to-1 emails triggered by a specific customer action, such as order confirmations, shipping notices, and password resets.
What are transactional emails?
Transactional emails are automated emails triggered by a specific action or event for an individual customer — an order confirmation, a shipping notice, a receipt, or a password reset. They are typically sent 1-to-1 to a single recipient in response to something the customer initiated, which sets them apart from marketing emails that go out in bulk to entire segments.
Why do transactional emails matter?
They carry information the customer is actively waiting for, so they see far higher open rates than campaign emails — often 60-80%. Legally they are a different category too: because they fulfill a contract or a requested service, they generally don’t require the marketing consent that promotional emails do. In return, deliverability is critical — if an order confirmation lands in spam, it immediately generates support tickets and erodes trust.
Common use cases
- Order and payment confirmations sent right after a completed purchase.
- Shipping and delivery notices with a track-and-trace link.
- Account emails such as welcome, verification, and password reset.
- Return and refund confirmations when a case is processed.
- Invoices and receipts for the customer’s bookkeeping.
Shopify perspective
In Shopify these emails are managed under Settings > Notifications, separate from marketing emails, and the templates can be customized with Liquid. Shopify sends from its own mail servers, so if you want to use a sender domain you should authenticate it with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC (via Shopify’s CNAME records) — Gmail and Yahoo now require all three for good deliverability. Avoid stuffing transactional emails with discount codes and product recommendations: if the commercial content overshadows the information, the email can legally be treated as marketing.