Making campaign messages transactional

Ortto supports sending transactional messages, for the purpose of sending communications that are not promotional (such as a notification of an update to your organization’s privacy policy) or are the result of an action the person took (such as an order or booking confirmation).

When you need to send a transactional message, you can do so a number of ways:

• As an email or SMS message, or push notification, in a journey campaign .
• As an email message in a playbook campaign.
• As a single-send email campaign.

Before configuring any journey or playbook campaigns to send transactional messages:

• Request approval from Ortto to send transactional messages by emailing help@ortto.com, and
• Set the relevant people who can enter these types of campaigns more than once and for recurring emails, choose the option/s to allow them to be in the journey more than once.

Create a transactional journey or playbook message

If you are creating a journey with transactional messages/notifications, it is recommended to include a Condition shape so that, for example, people who are opted out of SMS can receive a transactional email message instead. Learn more about creating transactional journeys in Creating a journey campaign.

To make a journey or playbook campaign’s messages/notifications transactional:

1. For a:
   • Journey campaign email or SMS message, or push notification:
     1. View the journey campaign and set the People can be in journey to More than once, and enter multiple times.
     2. Locate the messages/notifications to make transactional and click > Find in journey.
     3. In the journey flow editor, locate the message/notification and click  > View.
     4. In the message/notification view, click Edit at People can receive this message, and:
        1. choose More than once (optional but recommended so that a person can receive a relevant transactional messages/notification more than once, such as an order confirmed message).
        2. for email and SMS, select the This email/SMS is transactional checkbox. For push notifications, select the Ignore sending limits checkbox.
   • Playbook campaign email message:
     1. View the playbook campaign and in the Messages panel, click the email to make transactional.
     2. In the email view, click Edit in People can receive this message, and choose More than once.
     3. Select the This email is transactional checkbox.
2. In the Purpose field, you must provide a disclaimer/reason as to why the email or SMS message is transactional (push notifications excluded). This is critically important, since sending an email with no unsubscribe link could lead to the email message being reported as spam, which can have a severe impact on your own business', as well as Ortto’s email sending reputation. Explain why this is a transactional email and why unsubscribe preferences are being ignored for it. Similarly for SMS, sending a transactional SMS with promotional content is in violation of Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) compliance rules.
3. Click Save.

Create a transactional email campaign

To create a transactional single-send email campaign:

1. On the Campaigns page, click New campaign.
2. On the New campaign page, click Email to begin creating your email campaign, followed by Next.
3. Choose a template and select your recipients.
4. At the Setup step, populate the fields as needed and select the Transactional email checkbox.
5. In the Purpose field, you must provide a disclaimer/reason as to why the email is transactional. This is critically important, since sending an email with no unsubscribe link could lead to the email message being reported as spam, which can have a severe impact on your own business', as well as Ortto’s email sending reputation. Explain why this is a transactional email and why unsubscribe preferences are being ignored for it.
6. Continue with the rest of the email setup, including adding your content and reviewing the email before sending.
   At the Review step, you’ll see confirmation that the email is transactional.
7. Schedule or send the email as required.





A/B testing transactional messages

Transactional email and SMS messages can be A/B tested as a way to support engagement health (finding the most successful form of transactional content) such as for messages that are important to customers like an appointment reminder, or finding what works best for an abandoned cart notification.

For journeys and playbooks, you can enable A/B testing on an existing transactional message, or turn an A/B tested message into a transactional message.

• To turn on A/B testing for a transactional message, edit the message and at the Setup step, click Add A/B test and configure it as required.
• To make an A/B tested message transactional, click View (journeys) or Edit (playbooks) on the message, then in the message view, at People can receive this message:
  1. Select More than once (optional but recommended).
  2. Select the This email/SMS is transactional checkbox.
     As described in more detail in the preceding section, add the Purpose and remember that you must have approval from Ortto to send transactional messages.

For single-send email campaigns, at the Setup step, click Add A/B test and configure as required. Then, further down the Setup page, select Transactional email.

Identify transactional messages

To easily identify an email or SMS message as transactional, look for a dollar ($) symbol on the message in a journey or playbook.

In an email campaign or asset, you will be able to see the transactional status in the left-hand details panel when you view the message.

View people who have received a transactional message

When a transactional message has been sent, email and SMS activities associated with that message will contain the Transactional activity attribute.

This means that, for example, you can filter people who have been sent a transactional email.

You can also view this information from the activity view. For example, for the Sent email activity, you can view associated people and see in their activity details whether the message they were sent was transactional.