marketing email Archives

Posts Tagged ‘marketing email’

Why You Should Separate Your Transactional and Your Marketing Email Sending

Tuesday, March 4th, 2025

A typical healthcare organization sends at least two distinct classes of email messages: business or transactional emails and marketing emails.

Transactonal email consists of all of the individual, personal messages sent by sales, support, billing and other departments to specific people. These messages are generally more time sensitive and it is very important that the recipients actually receive them. These messages should not be delayed by any kind of spam filtering software, if possible.

Marketing emails are messages sent in bulk to many people at once. Examples of marketing messages include company newsletters, new product offers, promotions and ads, status notices, etc. You will need HIPAA compliant email marketing for this if you are marketing into the healthcare market

Separating your transactional and marketing emails can help ensure they are reliably delivered. Using different email servers and maybe even a unique domain name can improve your email deliverability. This post will look at why.

Separate Transactional and Marketing Email to Improve Deliverability

Successful marketing includes building your brand reputation in the eyes of your current and would-be customers or patients. However, by its very nature, sending marketing email can damage the reputation of your email address, domain, and email servers. It doesn’t have to, but it can … and it can happen in unexpected ways.

Spam Complaints

The larger your marketing mailing list is, the more people are on it who do not really want your email. This is a fact of email marketing, even if you abide by the CAN-SPAM Act and have an “opt-in” list.
The more often you send email to your mailing lists, the more often these people will be annoyed by your email messages.
Some of these annoyed people will complain that your email is “spam,” instead of using the unsubscribe link. This is because they are either too lazy to opt-out, annoyed by the message, don’t believe the opt-opt will work, or never even bothered to look to see if they could opt-out.

This all contributes to the generation of spam complaints. Receiving many spam complaints can cause email servers to start blocking your emails. This can be based on either your email content, your sending email address, or your sending email server IP address.

It is best to keep your complaint rate to a minimum by monitoring your complaint feed back loops, opting out anyone who complains and maintaining active mailing lists that contain only opted-in parties.

Spam Content

By its very nature, the types of email that fall into the bulk email marketing category share many common characteristics. Email filtering software is sophisticated and can often tell the difference between a marketing message and a business message. Sending many messages with spam-like qualities to a recipient server can result in your email being delayed, filtered, or blocked.

Spam-like content detection can be something as simple as the text of the required section of your email that indicates how to “opt-out.” Many legitimate messages can be classified as spam-like simply due to the nature of pattern recognition.

Email Delivery Throughput

Transactional email messages are classified as “transactional.” They are unique messages usually sent throughout the day to individuals. Marketing email messages are called “bulk” emails, meaning the same message is sent in large batches to multiple recipients in short time frames.

The sending of marketing messages can place a significant burden on your outbound email sending servers. Sending many messages within a short time frame can degrade performance and cause your business email to be delivered much more slowly if they are sharing the same outbound service.

Many marketing emails cannot be immediately delivered to the recipients and are placed in a queue to retry over time. For large marketing email lists (and especially in cases where your sending server is getting blacklisted) this can result in large email queues which slow down the delivery of both business and marketing email if sent from the same server.

Blacklisting

An all-too-common side effect of marketing email is having the sending email server blacklisted. When your server is blacklisted, by say yahoo.com, then all email to recipients at that domain will fail to be delivered. If you are sending transactional email through the same server as your marketing email then your transactional email to these same folks will also fail. This is the most critical reason why you should use separate servers for transactional and marketing email.

But how could you get blacklisted?

If your mailing lists have bad email addresses on them. E.g. non-opt in, purchased, spam trap, spidered, or other addresses that you should never email.
If your mailing addresses have lots of invalid email addresses on them. E.g. the list is very old and includes defunct addresses.
Your email content is frequently flagged as spam-like.

It is true that the larger your list and the more you send, the more likely you are to get blacklisted, unless you are careful about managing your subscriber base.

Shared Email Services

If you share outbound email servers with other customers of your provider, then your sending can be impacted by their behavior. If they are sending spam and get the server blacklisted, then that affects your emails as well. The only thing that protects you in these cases is the policies of your email provider. Better yet, use a dedicated server from LuxSci and don’t share your email servers with anyone else.

Recommendations for Successful Emailing

In order to reliably deliver your business and marketing emails, we recommend:

Using a different domain name in the “From” and “Reply” email address for your transactional and marketing emails. E.g. info@widget-wiz.net for your marketing email and info@widget-wiz.com for your business (e.g. sales) email. These can go back to the same person and same INBOX, but having different domains allows blocks on your marketing domain to not affect your business domain.
Using good deliverability tactics and best practices for your marketing email messages.
Sending your marketing email messages through email servers separate from your business email so that black lists and throughput issues do not affect your business email.
Ensuring that your email provider has good policies and controls in place so that other customers do not affect your email’s deliverability.

LuxSci customers:

Can benefit from dedicated email server infrastructure that sends fully HIPAA compliant email
Can use separate High Volume accounts for bulk email. These are sent from separate servers from our business email accounts and are designed for processing mass emails.

Want to learn more, contact us today!

Tags: blacklist, bulk email, business email, deliverability, email marketing, high volume, marketing, marketing email, Transactional
Posted in Business Solutions, HIPAA Marketing
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Infrastructure Requirements for Marketing and Transactional Email

Friday, June 14th, 2024

To design an appropriate email infrastructure, organizations must understand the types of emails they plan to send. Outside of regular business communications between colleagues, marketing and transactional emails are used to communicate externally with clients and customers. Although they are often lumped together, transactional and marketing emails serve different purposes and require different hardware configurations to successfully send emails with good deliverability.

What are Marketing Emails?

Marketing emails primarily contain content intended for a commercial purpose, like advertisements, promotions, or other marketing messages. Marketing emails are sent to groups of contacts that are prospects or customers to influence them to make a purchase or take a commercial action.

Some examples of marketing emails include:

Customer newsletters
Promotional offers
Event invitations
Other types of sales communications

One significant difference between marketing and transactional emails is that recipients must explicitly opt-in to receive marketing emails. It is against CAN-SPAM rules to send unsolicited marketing emails to people who have not consented to receive them. The penalties for non-compliance can be quite severe. Always allow individuals to opt out of marketing emails to stay compliant.

What are Transactional Emails?

Transactional emails are messages that relate to previous interactions or commercial relationships with a company. Users trigger email sending by taking specific actions, and the emails contain only information that is critical and relevant to the recipient.

Examples of transactional emails include:

Transaction receipts
Order updates and shipping notifications
Password resets and security notifications
Appointment reminders
Review requests

Transactional emails facilitate an already agreed-upon transaction or update a customer about an ongoing transaction. Transactional messages are exempt from most provisions of the CAN-SPAM Act, and recipients do not have to opt in to receive emails. For example, when someone orders a pair of sneakers online, the company does not need permission to email them when the order ships out.

How do I know if an email is a transactional or marketing message?

The email content determines whether a message is transactional or marketing. Some emails can contain both messages. We recommend asking three questions to ensure compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act:

What is the primary purpose of the message?
Whom is the message sent to?
Is the content misleading or deceptive?

First, what is the primary reason for sending the message? If the purpose is to remind a client of their upcoming appointment, that should be evident. Organizations can include a marketing message (perhaps offering them a coupon to use on additional services at their appointment). Still, the subject line and main message should emphasize the upcoming appointment.

Secondly, is there an existing relationship between the organization and the recipient? Did the recipient willingly join a mailing list? Or purchase a product from the company? The answer, in combination with the purpose of the email, will identify what type of mailing this is.

Finally, do not try and launder marketing messages as transactional emails. Sending an email with a misleading subject line like “Your Order Status” containing little to no information about a recent order is not permitted by CAN-SPAM.

Infrastructure Requirements

Most organizations need to send both types of email. The email sending requirements for sending bulk marketing emails differ from transactional emails. Marketing emails are one message sent in bulk to a large list of recipients. For example, a list of previous customers is sent an email promotion announcing a sale on sandals. Sending one email to thousands of recipients at the same time requires different memory and CPU than messages sent on a one-to-one basis. It typically does not matter if the sandal promotion reaches the recipient’s inbox at 10:00 am or 10:15 am. The message contents are not seriously time-sensitive. In the case of a marketing email, sending volume is more important than sending speed.

On the contrary, transactional emails are sent on a one-to-one basis and can be highly time-sensitive. Emails like password resets and order confirmations must arrive in the recipient’s inbox immediately after submission. This requires a different server configuration from marketing emails because speed is more important than sending volume. Designing different server configurations for marketing and transactional email is highly recommended to achieve sending goals.

At LuxSci, we design custom server configurations to meet the volume and throughput requirements for organizations of any size using our HIPAA compliant infrastructure.

HIPAA Requirements

Both marketing and transactional emails could fall under HIPAA regulations. Any communications that imply a relationship between a healthcare provider and a patient should be encrypted and follow HIPAA requirements. LuxSci provides both a Secure Email Marketing platform and Secure High Volume Email services to support the emailing requirements for HIPAA covered entities and their associates.

Contact LuxSci today to learn more about configuring an email infrastructure to support high volumes of marketing and transactional emails.

Tags: dedicated server, email marketing, email throughput, HIPAA email, marketing email, Transactional email
Posted in HIPAA Email Compliance, HIPAA Marketing
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New Feature: API Priority Queue

Tuesday, November 22nd, 2022

Maximize efficiency by employing our new email-sending prioritization features. Secure High Volume Email customers utilizing APIs for sending can now set a message priority to determine the order in which messages are sent out.

What is the API Priority Queue Feature?

This feature allows customers to set a priority on email messages sent via API. Customers can pass an optional parameter in their API to set the message priority on a scale of 0 – 9. Zero is the lowest priority, nine is the highest, and four is the default priority setting.

The API priority queue feature allows customers to send out higher-priority messages faster when the sending queue is already long.

Why is the API Priority Queue Useful?

Traditionally, all customer emails were processed in a “first come, first serve” method. Customers can now use the priority queue to determine the sending order when they simultaneously send transactional and marketing messages via the API.

For example, time-sensitive password resets could be stuck in the queue while a large blast of marketing emails is transmitted. Depending on the size of the email list and server capacity, the password reset email could be held up for several minutes to even hours. This situation is unacceptable for many business use cases.

Customers can designate transactional emails as high-priority with the API priority queue feature enabled. When transactional emails are given a high-priority status, they can jump the line and go out before less time-sensitive emails like marketing messages.

How to Utilize the API Priority Queue

This feature is only available to Secure High Volume Email customers utilizing APIs to send emails. It does not work for SMTP sending. Customers can add the optional parameter and desired value while crafting their API call to send emails. Additionally, customers can use the API configuration editor in the LuxSci UI to change the default priority value for all messages. You can review the details of our API by going to: https://luxsci.com/rest-api.html.

Tags: api, email api, luxsci news, marketing email, new feature, password reset, secure high volume, secure high volume email, sending priority, sending queue, Transactional email
Posted in New Feature Announcements
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New Feature: Custom Bounce Domains

Tuesday, July 26th, 2022

LuxSci has introduced a new feature to improve reporting for bounced transactional and marketing messages. The new “Custom Bounce Domains” feature allows administrators to set a custom domain for bounce processing that will not break DMARC.

What is DMARC?

DMARC stands for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance. It protects users from forged emails and instructs the email provider on what to do with messages that fail SPF or DKIM. Implementing DMARC is highly recommended to help stop suspicious messages from reaching inboxes.

Why Custom Bounce Domains are Needed

However, implementing SPF and DMARC records can sometimes cause issues for transactional and marketing messages. To understand why let’s look at how DMARC verifies SPF records.

The Return-Path specifies the email address where bounced email messages should be sent if there are unable to be delivered. It is usually the same domain as the sender’s email address. However, when sending marketing or transactional emails, the Return-Path email address is often different from the sender for various tracking and reporting reasons.

If the Return-Path address does not match the domain or subdomain used in the SPF record, it can cause DMARC to fail, and the bounced messages won’t be routed according to the pre-defined rules.

How to Implement Custom Bounce Domains

Now, our customers can create custom bounce domains to prevent DMARC from failing. To set it up, log in to your account and visit the Account Settings -> Email Custom Bounce Domains. Make sure that the “Bounce Processing” settings are enabled before altering the Custom Bounce Domain setting.

Before adding the new bounce domain to your account, you must create a new CNAME (like bounces.yourdomain.com) in the domain’s DNS settings that points to the new destination. At LuxSci, the default is “returnto.luxsci.com.” Once set up, return to the settings and add the new subdomain to specify the Return-Path. After this is enabled, emails will align with SPF for DMARC since the sender’s domain and Return-Path domain match.

Questions? Please contact our support team for more information on enabling these settings.

Tags: bounce message, bounce processing, DMARC, marketing email, return path, spf, Transactional email, unsubscribe
Posted in New Feature Announcements, HIPAA Email Compliance
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Increasing Operational Efficiency with Email Automation

Tuesday, April 12th, 2022

If you work in a busy healthcare practice, administrative tasks can create additional costs and barriers to care. Common communications like appointment reminders, billing statements, and other external messages take a lot of time to create and send. By automating these emails, it’s possible to increase operational efficiency and improve patient outcomes.

What is Email Automation?

Email automation allows organizations to automatically send emails based on pre-determined triggers or behaviors. Receipts, shipping notifications, password resets are all common types of automated transactional emails. The main message content is created in advance. Then, variables are used to insert custom information into the template automatically. Most importantly, the email is sent when a certain action is taken. Many people are familiar with automated emails in the form of receipts. For example, you make an online purchase and a receipt is automatically emailed to you with the exact details of your purchase. Next, we explore some examples for how email automation can increase operational efficiency in the healthcare system.

How Email Automation Works

There are many ways to utilize email automation to streamline patient communications. One example is appointment reminders. This is a good message to automate because:

The message is generally the same for every recipient
Variables can be used to customize the content: the patient’s name and the date/time of their appointment.
There is a clear event to trigger the email (the date of the upcoming appointment).

Let’s look at an example of an appointment reminder email:

An administrator creates a template with the message content and layout. It may read something like: “Hi [patient name], This notice is to remind you of your upcoming appointment with Dr. Smith on [X date] at [X time]. Please call our office at 555-555-5555 if you need to reschedule.”

Next, connect the email program to a patient database, like an EHR or CRM. If properly integrated, it is possible to pull in the correct information to replace the variables (in brackets above) for the email recipient. For example, the if the email was sent to a patient named Jane Doe, the email program would pull in the correct details from her record to read: “Hi Jane Doe, This notice is to remind you of your upcoming appointment with Dr. Smith on May 2, 2022 at 1pm. Please call our office at 555-555-5555 if you need to reschedule.”

Finally, set up a trigger point to instruct the email program under what conditions to send the email. For an appointment reminder, the administrator may choose to send the email one week before the appointment, so the recipient has ample time to respond.

Once the template, variables, and trigger are set up, ongoing attention from office staff is not required. Each day appointment reminder emails will be sent out when the conditions of the trigger are met.

The Benefits of Email Automation

By automating common administrative email communications, it frees up staff time to focus on patients. Many healthcare providers still have staff members call patients to remind them of upcoming appointments. By automating this task, it streamlines operations and frees up staff time to focus on other tasks more directly tied to improving patient health outcomes. Using email (and/or text message) reminders can also help decrease no-show rates and reduce the costs of rescheduling.

Email automation is just one tool that can help streamline administrative workflows, provide cost savings, and improve the health outcomes of patients.

Don’t Forget HIPAA

Automated emails like appointment reminders, billing messages, and test results all contain ePHI and must be protected under HIPAA guidelines. Review our HIPAA guidelines for email and take steps to secure systems before starting to automate and send transactional emails containing ePHI.

Get Started with Email Automation

To get started, there are a few internal questions that need to be answered.

First, identify the data source- do you have a database or EHR that contains the information needed to trigger and personalize email messages? Next, how will these emails be sent? Do you have an email marketing platform with automation capabilities? Finally, how will these messages be secured?

Once these questions are answered, LuxSci’s Secure High Volume Email service can help securely scale your operations. Contact us if you are interested in learning more about automating email workflows for your healthcare practice.

Tags: appointment reminders, email automation, marketing email, operational efficiency, secure email, Transactional email
Posted in HIPAA Email Compliance, HIPAA Marketing
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