What types of messages are a good fit for Flexmail?

What types of messages are a good fit for Flexmail?

Flexmail is built for two types of email: marketing emails and transactional emails. Understanding the difference matters because they travel through separate sending infrastructure, and mixing them up is one of the most common causes of deliverability problems.

This article explains what belongs where, how the two types are separated in Flexmail, and what standards apply to both.

Before you begin

No setup is required before reading this article. If you're deciding how to integrate Flexmail into your tech stack, it's worth reading this before you start building.

Marketing emails

Marketing emails are messages you send to multiple people at once. They're commercial or informational in nature, and they require explicit consent from recipients under GDPR. This is the type of email you send through the Flexmail platform.

Examples of marketing emails:

• Newsletters
• Promotional campaigns
• Product launches and updates
• Event invitations
• Customer surveys
• Marketing automation emails

Transactional emails

Transactional emails are triggered by a specific action taken by one of your contacts or customers. They're always sent one-to-one and are essential to the operation of your product or service. You send these through the Flexmail transactional API.

Examples of transactional emails:

• Order confirmations
• Password reset emails
• Welcome emails triggered by account creation
• Invoice and payment notifications
•  Reservation confirmations
• Account change notifications

Why Flexmail keeps them separate

Marketing and transactional emails behave very differently. Marketing campaigns generate more complaints and bounces by nature, while transactional emails need to arrive fast and reliably every single time.

When these two types share the same IP addresses, a poorly performing campaign can cause your order confirmations and password resets to land in spam or be delayed. Flexmail routes them through separate IP ranges so neither type can affect the other's deliverability.

Quick comparison

Keeping your sending quality high

Regardless of which type of email you're sending, a few standards apply across the platform:

• Keep spam complaint rates below 0.1%. Gmail begins filtering above this level.
• Keep bounce rates below 10%. Only send to real, active email addresses.
• Set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC before sending. Flexmail requires proper authentication.
• Only send marketing emails to contacts who have given clear, documented consent.

Common mistakes to avoid

Adding promotional content to transactional emails

This is the most common mistake. A password reset email or order confirmation with a promotional banner at the bottom is a GDPR violation. Keep transactional emails strictly functional and route any promotional content through the marketing platform instead.

Sending bulk emails through the transactional API

The transactional API is designed for individual, triggered messages, not bulk sends. Trying to use it for newsletters or campaigns will harm your transactional deliverability and is against Flexmail's terms of service.

Not setting up authentication before sending

Both marketing and transactional email require SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to be configured on your domain. Without this, your messages are likely to be filtered or rejected by recipient mail servers.

GDPR considerations

Marketing emails require explicit, documented consent from every recipient. You must be able to demonstrate that each contact opted in and when. Flexmail's double opt-in forms handle this automatically.

Transactional emails do not require marketing consent because they're essential to a service the person has already signed up for. However, they cannot contain promotional material, and they must still comply with GDPR data processing requirements.

Next steps

Now that you understand how Flexmail handles different email types, here are the logical next steps:

• Set up your sender validation and email authentication before sending anything
• Read "Getting started with the Flexmail transactional API" if you need to send order confirmations, password resets, or other triggered messages$
• Build your first opt-in form to start collecting consented contacts for your marketing campaigns