Making journey and playbook campaign messages transactional

Ortto’s journey or playbook campaigns support transactional messages, which are email or SMS (journeys only) messages, or push notifications, sent when triggered by actions within these types of campaigns, as well as by activities.

Transactional emails are only supported on some Ortto plans.

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.

Transactional messages are sent irrespective of the email or SMS limits you have set in your Ortto account Settings.
Transactional email messages are sent irrespective of a person’s subscription status.
Transactional SMS messages and push notifications are not sent to people who are unsubscribed/opted-out of SMS or push notifications.

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:

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:
    
    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).
    
    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.
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.

Never make a message transactional if it is not transactional by nature.
Click Save.

Example making a playbook email message transactional

If you did not seek approval from Ortto to send transactional messages prior to creating the message, you will be asked to do so at this point by submitting an explanation of why you need this feature. Type your reason in the Enable transactional messages pop-up as required and Ortto’s support team will review your request and notify you of the outcome. When you are approved you can send transactional messages.

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.

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 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.