E-commerce and payments
What is Transactional email?
Transactional email is automated mail triggered by an action — an order confirmation, a booking reminder, a password reset. It is expected by the recipient, and reaching the inbox depends almost entirely on sending domain authentication.
Also called: order confirmation email · SMTP
The three records that decide deliverability
- SPF
- Lists which servers may send mail for your domain.
- DKIM
- Cryptographically signs messages so tampering is detectable.
- DMARC
- Tells receivers what to do when SPF or DKIM fail, and where to send reports.
The most common failure
Sending from your own domain through a server not listed in SPF, which is the default outcome of using a hosting provider’s mail function without configuration. Messages land in spam, and because the sender never sees a bounce, nobody discovers it until a customer complains.
What to verify before launch
- Send a real order confirmation to a Gmail and an Outlook address and check the inbox, not the sent folder
- Confirm SPF, DKIM and DMARC all pass in the message headers
- Check the from address is on your domain, not the host’s
- Set DMARC to quarantine with a reporting address rather than leaving it at none
Where this is covered in depth
A definition can only go so far. E-commerce website development: what the whole build actually involves covers this properly — 7 minutes, free, no email required.
Who wrote this
Anas Bin Masud builds e-commerce sites and does technical SEO for businesses in the UK, Canada and Pakistan. These definitions come from client work rather than from a content brief — where an entry describes a mistake, it is usually one found on a real site. More about how I work.