The majority of marketing emails can be broken up into two types:

• Transactional emails provide the customer with important information about their purchase. These can include order receipts, shipping notifications, or updates if a product they ordered is out of stock. 
• Promotional emails are used to encourage customers to take a certain action. These can include newsletters, notifications about sales and upcoming events, or other updates. 
  

We’ve already gone over how to write a good promotional email, so in this blog post, we’ll be focusing on how to write a good transactional email. Well-written transactional emails are succinct and consist of these parts:  

Header

Similar to promotional emails, your email header is the first thing a customer sees when they open your transactional email. You want your logo to be visible and linked to your website or social media account, that way customers know who the email is coming from. 

Under your logo, you may have a headline or some text that explains what the email is for, like “Receipt” or “Shipping Notification”. You can also choose to use text related to the transaction, like the name of your product, or you can get creative and use something else related to your business. In your header, you may want to also include some basic information like the date or time. If you’re struggling with this, you can copy one of your promotional emails and use it as a template to start. 

Here’s an example of what our receipt email header looks like. You’ll notice that since we process payments through a third party, our logo isn’t at the top, but we’ve got the date and the product purchased (“The Cultivate Method: The Starter Kit”) listed:

If you’re using a point of sale system or other marketing software to help send your transactional emails, you may be able to use their templates to format your email header easily. Here’s an example of a receipt sent from a local merchant who uses Square. You’ll see their business’ logo and name are very clear at the top of the email:

Body 

In a transactional email, the body content is the most important section. This content is generally what customers will search for in their inboxes when they want to verify a transaction, remember what they previously purchased, figure out how to do a return or exchange, review subscription terms and so on. 

You want to make sure your body content is clear and concise, so a customer would be able to look back at it and remember this specific interaction with your business. 

This means:

• No shorthand that isn’t easily deciphered: You can use common abbreviations like “with” to “w/”, but try to stay away from uncommon or unclear shorthand that a customer would struggle to understand. For example, “Grey Wolf Embroidered Sweatshirt” is much more descriptive and easy to understand than “G W E Shirt”. 
• Include calculations: If there are calculations involved in the transaction, like sales tax or VAT/duty, different quantities of a product, or gratuity, make sure that math is clearly laid out for customers. 
• Link to your website, if possible: If you can link back to your product page or pages, that will make it easier for customers to reference what they previously purchased from you. 
  

Unlike a promotional email, your transactional email may not have a call to action, or CTA. That’s because the CTA might be opening the email itself, just to reference the body content (eg. checking a receipt for accuracy). However, if you want the customer to do something, like click a link to access their download or track their order, you need to make sure your CTA is clear. 

Here’s an example of what a test receipt email looks like for us. You’ll see the copy says it was a test purchase, and the “View content” button is a very clear CTA that tells customers what to do in order to access the product they have purchased. There’s a bit more information underneath the CTA that provide additional context for the customer:

In this example, the total transaction amount is listed at the top in large font, so it’s very clear how much was spent, and each product is clearly listed with a description, unit cost and quantity. The total, including sales tax, is calculated at the bottom of the receipt: 

Unsubscribe

Like with a promotional email, you will need to include an unsubscribe link at the bottom of your transactional email. POS systems and other marketing and ecommerce tools generally include this automatically. 

Unsubscribe links are required because promotional emails need to comply with spam laws, like CAN-SPAM in the US. Spam laws are typically enforced based on the recipient (your customer) and their location, not yours. 

Here’s an example from the bottom of our receipt email. You’ll see the platform we use automatically includes additional promotional links, but there is a clear “Unsubscribe” listed at the bottom of the email: 

Similarly, this Square-generated receipt includes a “Manage preferences” option, from which a customer can choose whether or not they’d like to unsubscribe from your emails or all emails. 

Subject line and sender

For promotional emails, your subject line and pre-header should be very clear and easy to understand. You want to make sure that customers know what you’re sending them, so they don’t ignore your email or mark it as spam! Your subject line can be as simple as “Receipt - Your Business Name Here”, "Your order from Business Name Here has shipped" or “Transaction Summary - Date”. You may also choose to pull in pre-header text in transactional emails automatically from the body content, so customers get a preview of the email in their inbox. 

Similarly, the sender that is listed on your transactional email should be clear. It should show up as you or your business’ name, so customers know where the email is coming from before they open it. Try to avoid abbreviations or automatic names from your POS, like “Register 1204971”. 

Since most transactional emails are automated to a certain extent, make sure you check your transactional emails every time you make a change to them. Run a few practice or dummy transactions through your system to make sure the email shows up the way you want it to, in your own inbox. 

And voila! Now you’ve written an effective transactional email.