The New Automation Builder: Understanding Email Types

When sending an automated email, you're asked to select an email type for it – promotional, business transactional or business critical. The type you choose determines your recipients' ability to mute or unsubscribe from the email, and whether or not it affects your email marketing balance.

Your email marketing balance shows the number of emails you can send to recipients each month, including automated emails. You can send 200 emails a month for free, or upgrade your plan to send more emails.

Promotional emails

Promotional emails are non-essential business information or marketing content. These types of emails will always be counted towards your monthly balance. Recipients who have unsubscribed or muted the selected notification topic will not receive this email.

Read an example of an automation with a promotional email

Lisa owns an antique jewelry company. One of the ways Lisa promotes her site and builds her client relationships is by sending coupons on their birthdays.

To streamline this process, she creates an automation to send her clients their birthday coupon, a promotional email in other words. These automated emails will count towards her monthly email marketing balance.

Business transactional emails

Business transactional emails include essential information to your customers, directly related to their activity on your site. Recipients who have muted the selected email notification topic will not receive this email.

These types of emails will only be counted towards your monthly balance if you're the one who created the automation. If an automation was 'Installed for you' with this email type, it will not count towards your balance.

Read an example of an automation with a business transactional email

Rebecca owns a boutique catering company where she sells home-made baked goods. She wants to make sure that her clients stay as informed as possible when making a purchase on her site.

Wix automatically installs an automation that sends an email to a client once they submit an order form to let them know that their order has been received. Since Wix installed this automation for Rebecca, it will not count towards her monthly email marketing balance.

Business critical emails

Business critical emails are only meant for critical cases. These should be reserved only for emails that are absolutely necessary to send, where it makes sense to not display an unsubscribe link.

Recipients cannot mute these emails and they will be sent regardless of any unsubscribe preferences.

These types of emails will only be counted towards your monthly balance if you're the one who created the automation. If an automation was 'Installed for you' with this email type, then it will not count towards your balance.

Read an example of an automation with a business critical email type.

Allen owns a dance studio for all ages and dance styles. To streamline the sign-up process, he requires a user name and password to register for a class.

Wix automatically sets up an automation to send an email to any client who requests to reset their password. Since Wix installed this automation for Allen, it will not count towards his monthly email marketing balance.

FAQs

Click a question below to learn more.

Do I have to select an email type?

Yes. In order to finish configuring your email automation, you will be required to select an email type in the settings of the Send an email action.

How can I tell if an automation was installed for me?

You can find a list of automations that were 'Installed for you' on your automations dashboard. Then click the Installed for you tab.

In the automation builder, you can tell if the automation was installed for you by checking if the 'Installed for you' label appears at the top.

What is the difference between business transactional and critical?

The main difference between transactional and critical is that it is impossible to unsubscribe from an email set as critical. These types of emails should be reserved only for emails that are absolutely necessary to send and are ok to not have unsubscribe links.