Lesson 3 of 7 2 min read

Transactional Provisioning

Key concepts and best practices for email development.

Next you will want to determine how much of your mail is transactional in nature, as this carries unique legal weight, and inboxes treat transactional mail differently from all other email.

Use what you learned in the previous lesson to determine which of your emails qualify as “transactional.”

Messaging goal	Example use cases	Transactional?	Unsubscribe required?
Compliance & security	Password reset Security code Receipt	Yes ✅	No
Notifications & updates	Changelog announcement Social media notifications Reminder messages	No	Yes ✅
Marketing & branding	Weekly newsletter Drip automations Discount offers	No	Yes ✅

The key thing to remember is that while transactional messages are always automations, not all automations are transactional - this is a very important distinction that’s easy to miss!

Unsubscribes for Automations

Your automated notifications may seem like transactional emails at first, but they may not qualify unless they are explicitly compliance or security-related. When in doubt, include an opt-out. Unsubscribe links can help you:

Prevent complaints: Users often report your messages as spam when they can’t figure out how to opt-out
Improve delivery: Inbox providers send transactional emails straight to spam if they see any marketing-adjacent content. Including an unsubscribe link prevents this
Follow the law: Including unsubscribe links can help you stay compliant with SPAM-CAN Act and other international legal frameworks

Be sure your unsubscribe links allow for one-click opt-out (in other words, users don’t need to log into your app to unsubscribe), and that they have the required List-unsubcribe header. Otherwise you risk spam filtration by inbox providers like Gmail and Outlook. Resend Automations and Broadcasts offer unsubscribe handling natively.