Abandoned cart emails can be extremely helpful to increase your conversion rates and close leads that were close to walking away from the sale. Abandoned cart emails are pretty easy to set up for most e-commerce platforms and when we set up abandoned cart emails through HubSpot the most common question we get is: Are abandoned cart emails marketing emails or transactional emails? 

HubSpot Marketing Emails

If you're sending emails to your contacts through HubSpot, you're most likely using marketing email already. When you create an email template and send it to a list, that's a marketing email. Marketing emails are designed to promote products, services, or brand awareness to customers and potential customers. If you're already a HubSpot user you'll know that to send a marketing email you need to have the recipient set as a marketing contact, and that your HubSpot billing increases with the number of marketing contacts you have in your account. 

HubSpot Transactional Emails

Transaction emails are not as well known. While a contact can opt-out of receiving marketing communications there are some emails that they would still expect to receive such as:

• order confirmations
• shipping notifications
• password reset emails

These emails should be sent regardless of a contact's marketing contact status or opt-in/subscription status. 

To ensure that these emails are going out to the right people at the right time, HubSpot created the Transactional Email type that overrides marketing email sending restrictions. These do come at a cost though, with the HubSpot transactional email tool coming in at around $600/month to add it to your portal. 

Abandoned Cart Emails: Marketing Emails or Transactional Emails?

Abandoned cart emails are not essential communications about an order or a customer’s account. Instead, they serve as a marketing strategy aimed at re-engaging potential customers who have added items to their online shopping carts but left the website without making a purchase. 

Abandoned cart emails play an important role in the marketing funnel by nurturing leads and recovering potentially lost sales but they are not (for the customer) an expected or essential piece of communication for their account.

Relevance of Opt-in and Opt-out

Opt-in and opt-out rules are crucial when it comes to email communication. In the case of HubSpot marketing emails, customers must opt-in, and the recipients must have a "Marketing" status. Transactional emails, on the other hand, don't require opt-in as they are a required part of the transaction. 

Read more: Do Abandoned Cart Emails Violate GDPR Rules?

Need Expert Advice?

If you're not sure if Transactional Emails in HubSpot are worth the extra cost? Need some new ideas on how to improve your conversion rates? Or, if you want to grow your Email Marketing, contact us! We'll help you understand your options and can help you hit your marketing goals.