Transactional emails: the ones customers wait for, and what they can carry
The emails a customer goes looking for: the order confirmation, the dispatch note, the password reset. They're service first, and the rules change the moment they start selling.
- 136Transactional Emails
- Emails triggered by specific user actions, such as order confirmations, shipping notifications, and password resets, essential for customer communication.
- Examples
- Order confirmation, shipping updates, refunds, password resets, account changes
- Consent needed
- No, while it's genuinely a service message about something they did
- Sent from
- Your shop platform by default, or Klaviyo once each message is approved
- Can't carry
- Coupons, other products or marketing calls to action, under Klaviyo's rules
What makes an email transactional, and what quietly turns it into marketing
A transactional email exists because the customer did something and needs to know what happens next. You owe it to them. So it goes to everybody who ordered, including people who never signed up for marketing and people who unsubscribed last year.
- Order confirmation, the moment the order's placed
- Shipping confirmation, with tracking, when it leaves
- Delivery updates, where the carrier passes them on
- Refund, return and cancellation confirmations
- Account emails, like password resets and changed details
The catch is what you put in it. The ICO's view is that a service message with anything promotional in it counts as direct marketing, even when selling isn't its main job. Your logo doesn't count. A discount code does. The ICO's direct marketing guidance sets it out, and none of this is legal advice.
Sending them from your shop platform or from Klaviyo
Out of the box, Shopify sends order and shipping emails from its own notification templates. They work. They also look nothing like the rest of your email, and they know nothing about the customer beyond the order.
Klaviyo can send them instead, from a flow triggered by the order event. Each message has to be approved before Klaviyo treats it as transactional, and the rules are strict: no coupons, no products they haven't bought, no newsletter content, no marketing call to action. Edit an approved message and it loses the status until it's approved again.
Whichever you pick, pick one. Klaviyo's own help centre says to switch off the matching emails in your shop platform first, or customers hear twice about one order. Where your platform won't let you, restyle its template to match instead.
What belongs in a transactional email, and what waits for the next one
Less selling than you'd like, and that's fine. The order confirmation earns its keep by being clear: what they bought, what it cost, where it's going and when. Get that right and the next email you send starts from trust.
| Belongs in it | Waits for the next flow |
|---|---|
| The items, the total and the delivery address | A discount on the next order |
| Tracking, and an honest delivery date | Products they haven't bought |
| How to change or cancel the order | A newsletter sign-up |
| Who to contact if something's wrong | Anything about a sale |
The selling belongs in the post purchase flow, which can go to anybody who agreed to marketing, or who bought from you and was given a clear chance to say no.
Related terms
FAQs
Do transactional emails need an unsubscribe link?
Not the way marketing email does. A genuine service message isn't direct marketing, so the marketing unsubscribe rules don't apply to it, and somebody who unsubscribed still gets their receipt. In the US, the FTC's [CAN-SPAM guide](https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business) exempts transactional messages from most of its rules too. Add promotion and all of that changes.
Can I put product recommendations in an order confirmation?
You can, but it stops being a service message. Under UK rules a promotional element makes it direct marketing, which needs consent the customer may not have given, and Klaviyo won't approve a message as transactional with products in it they haven't bought. Keep the receipt clean. Put the recommendations in the post purchase flow, where they're allowed and expected.
Why do our order emails look different from our Klaviyo emails?
Because two systems send them. Your shop platform sends order and shipping notifications from its own templates, and Klaviyo sends everything you built there. You can restyle the platform's templates to match, or move the emails into Klaviyo flows and switch the platform's versions off where it allows. Either works. Both at once means two emails per order.
Rather we explained it on your own account?
Bring your Klaviyo account to a growth consultation. We'll walk through what this means for your numbers, in plain English, and what we'd fix first.
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