Get started with transactional email
Transactional email is how you send one-to-one messages from your own app through Tarvent, such as receipts, order confirmations, password resets, and account alerts. Unlike a campaign, which goes to many contacts at once, a transactional message is triggered by something a single person does and is sent to that person. This guide explains what transactional email is, how it works, and how to send your first message.
In this guide, you'll find:
- What transactional email is
- How it works
- Credits at a glance
- Sending your first message
- Tracking and reporting
- FAQs
1 What transactional email is
Transactional email is sent programmatically from your application over Tarvent's API, one message at a time, in response to something a user does. Common examples are receipts, confirmations, shipping notices, password resets, and security alerts.
It's different from a campaign in a few ways:
- A campaign is composed in Tarvent and sent to a group of contacts. A transactional message is sent by your app, to one recipient, through the API.
- Transactional messages are billed with credits (one per recipient), separate from your campaign sending.
2 How it works
Your app sends Tarvent a transaction, which is a single request describing one message: who it's from, who it's going to, the subject, the content, and any personalization. Tarvent renders the message, delivers it, and records what happens to it (delivered, opened, clicked, bounced).
- You can send through the API or relay through Tarvent's SMTP address, whichever fits your stack.
- Content can come from a saved template or be included directly in the request as HTML and plain text.
- You can personalize each message with variables, and reference an existing Tarvent contact instead of typing an address.
The details of building a request are covered in Sending transactional email through the API.
3 Credits at a glance
Transactional email uses credits, one per recipient. Every account includes a free monthly allowance so you can start right away, and you can select a larger monthly amount as your volume grows. Credits are a monthly amount that resets each billing cycle. See Transactional email credits, billing, and overage for the full details.
4 Sending your first message
There are three things to set up:
- Create an API key. Your app authenticates to Tarvent with an API key, created in your account settings.
- Verify a sending domain. The "from" address on a transactional message must use a domain you've verified in Tarvent, so your mail authenticates and delivers well.
- Build the request. Use the Email API Call Builder (in the Help menu) to set every option through the UI and generate ready-to-run code in your language.
Tip: Use the Call Builder's "Force error response" option to test how your app handles errors before you send anything real. See the API guide for details.
5 Tracking and reporting
Tarvent tracks delivery, opens, clicks, and bounces for each transactional message. You can review this in the transactional reports under Reports. See Transactional email reports for what's available.