This question has been on my mind this past week as I worked with one of our banking clients on a new project. What entered my mind was not what they were doing, but what others deem the difference to be.

Now my understanding, and I would love your thoughts, is that a transactional email is one that:

1. Confirms an order or action that you need a confirmation email

2. An alert in a change in status or account

3. A change in relationship, privacy policy or access

Now there is a fine line in transactional emails where you can (using best practices) allocate 20% of the message to allow a marketing message. Apple does this well with iTunes transactional email receipts. They do not lead with it, nor does it interfere with the transactional email message. Subject lines are clear, copy is clear and the message can be easily scanned to know what is occurring.

But then this weekend I got this email from Technorati. I had to pause to understand if this was a transactional email OR a marketing email. My first thought was that it was alerting me to changes at Technorati in regard to features and my account. But as I read through it more, it seemed to be a straight marketing message.

So then why would they not add CAN SPAM compliance to this message? No unsubscribe, no address footer, nothing. I was a a total failure. The subject line was deceiving to me in that it made me think that it was a service message about Publishing Content on Technorati. Take a look and tell me your thoughts.

It was not unsolicited as I have an account and opted in, but the lack of Can Spam compliance leaves me wondering who was asleep at the wheel over there.

Messages like this make me question what is transactional and what is just plain old email marketing. You should consider this as you prepare messages for your users/subscribers.

Should all emails have a way to unsubscribe? Is it a best practice only in regard to transactional messages? Or is it just a good thing to do to always allow people to have a preference to the emails they get?

Back on the path of banking, I had to think it through this week about the transactional emails that they send about account notices, bank cards, or the alert of a possible account compromise. You would think that you would always want to get notices like these, but what if you don’t? Spam is in the end in the eyes of the receiver.