Transactional Emails

Transactional emails are one-time, programmatic emails sent to users based on specific triggers in your application. Unlike marketing emails (broadcasts and sequences), transactional emails are service-related messages that users expect to receive.

Common examples include:

Password reset emails
OTP/verification codes
Account confirmation emails
Order receipts and shipping notifications
Security alerts

Setting Up Transactional Emails

To send transactional emails, you need an Access Token with transactional email permissions. Broadcast automatically creates a default transactional email token when you create a channel.

Navigate to Access Tokens in the sidebar to view and manage your tokens.

Access Tokens page showing the default transactional email token

Each token displays: - Name: A label to identify the token’s purpose - Token: The masked API key (first and last 4 characters visible) - Permissions: What the token can access (e.g., Transactional read/write)

Sending a Test Email

Before integrating with your application, you can test your setup directly from Broadcast. Navigate to Transactional in the sidebar.

If you have an access token configured, you’ll see a Try it now card with a button to send a test email to your account email address.

Transactional emails empty state with test email option and API reference

The page also displays a ready-to-use cURL command that you can copy and use in your terminal or integrate into your application.

Viewing Transactional Emails

After sending transactional emails, they appear in a list view where you can:

Filter by email: Search for emails sent to a specific recipient
Filter by status: View all, sent, queued, pending, or failed emails
Monitor in real-time: The “Live” indicator shows real-time updates as emails are processed

Transactional emails list showing sent emails with status indicators

Click on any email to view its details, including:

Recipient information: Email address and name
Email server: Which server was used to send the email
Timeline: When the email was created, queued, and sent
Email preview: View the rendered email content

Transactional email detail view showing timeline and email preview

You can also resend any transactional email directly from the detail view.

Email Status

Transactional emails go through the following statuses:

Status	Description
Pending	Email created but not yet queued for sending
Queued	Email is in the queue, waiting to be sent
Sent	Email was successfully delivered to the mail server
Failed	Email failed to send (check error details for more info)

Sending via API

To send transactional emails programmatically, use the API endpoint with your access token. See the Transactional Email API documentation for complete details.

Quick example:

curl "https://your-broadcast-domain.com/api/v1/transactionals.json" \
  -X POST \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "to": "[email protected]",
    "subject": "Your verification code",
    "body": "Your code is: 123456"
  }'

Unsubscribe Behavior

Transactional emails are fundamentally different from marketing emails. They include essential service-related messages that users need to receive regardless of their marketing preferences.

Transactional emails will always be delivered, even if the recipient has unsubscribed from marketing emails. This follows industry standards (CAN-SPAM, GDPR) which distinguish between marketing communications and service-related transactional messages.

However, transactional emails will still be blocked in these cases:

Redacted subscribers: If a subscriber has been redacted (GDPR data deletion), transactional emails will not be sent to comply with data protection regulations.
Global suppression list: If an email address is on the global suppression list (typically due to hard bounces or invalid addresses), transactional emails will not be sent.