Professional, marketing or transactional email, explanations…

Electronic messaging has become central to the exchange of information within companies. Its formal, standardized nature also makes it the ideal means of communication between different entities, ensuring compatibility that is independent of the technologies used, time zones and organizational variations. By their nature and method of generation, we identify three types of electronic messages.

The different forms of electronic messages

Professional e-mail: This is a message composed and sent by a user, whatever the e-mail client and hardware used (webmail, computer e-mail client, telephone e-mail client, etc.). Today, it represents one of the main forms of communication, both within the company and with external contacts.

Email marketing: This is a message composed by a user, usually using a dedicated tool, and distributed to a large number of recipients. Its purpose is to provide information to a group of people (list of subscribers, members of a project, a service, a company, etc.). This category includes advertising, newsletters, etc.

Transactional email: Here, the message is generated and sent automatically, without human intervention, by a server in response to a user’s action. This is the case for password renewal requests, absence messages, alert notifications or registration validation on certain websites.

In fact, although these messages all use the same technology and protocol, they are very different. Whereas a professional email will be mainly text, and possibly a few attachments, a marketing email will naturally be more advanced in terms of layout, with images, titles and links more present. Transactional emails, on the other hand, will be based on a strict model, and may include specific information.

Differences between business, transactional and marketing emails

Their differences in content and purpose lead us to consider different technical treatments adapted to their needs specific. For example, if the recipient list of a marketing email contains several non-existent addresses (whether typing errors, old addresses that have been deleted or domains that have disappeared), there is a risk of It is important that the IP and domain of the sender are blacklisted. Similarly, a fraudulent use of a form on an Internet site may result in the generation of a very large number of transactional emails, which can lead to overloads, crashes and damage to the reputation of the the company.

For all these reasons, we recommend separating flows wherever possible: Use of outbound IPs different sender domains (“exemple.fr” and “informations.exemple.fr”) for example) and use different systems.

Mailout, our outgoing flow management tool (an Altospam service option), is reserved exclusively for professional emails. It has two main objectives:

• Protect the sending domain by blocking spam and other threats, such as hacking or virus infection.
• Ensure optimal deliverability, by accompanying the implementation of messaging authentication systems (SPF, DKIM) and ensuring optimal reputation of sending servers.

Email marketers have other needs as well, such as check the quality of the mailing base and help with the formatting of the content. In this case, the notion of “tracking” is also important. to know the impact of the emailing on the target. Management transactional emails must incorporate a thorough verification process of the recipient, set up limits and controls to prevent being exploited for malicious use. Specialized companies in the management of marketing and transactional emails: Message Business, DoList, SendinBlue, Mailchimp, Sendgrid and Mailjet, which are regularly used by our customers.

There’s everything to be gained from compartmentalizing your messaging flows, this optimizes and secures all exchanges, and guarantees good corporate communications. Reputations applied to flows are thus independent and the impact is limited in the event of problem.