The Hidden World of Transactional Email [Infographic]

Transactional email is booming: web applications are sending an average of 631,000 transactional emails per month. See more results from our recent survey.

Transcript of Infographic

Via SendGrid: Making transactional email easy for developers everywhere.

The Evolution of Transactional Email

1997: Transactional email emerged as an email category in the late 1990s as ecommerce retailers begain sending purchase receipts and shipping notifications via email.
2003: Transactional email was solidified as an email category in 2003, when the CAN-SPAM Act exempted ‘transactional or relationship messages’ from the rules and regulations of traditional marketing or commercial emails.
2012: Transactional email in 2012 includes any email triggered by a user’s interaction with a web application, including signups, password changes, check-ins, notifications, and friend of follower requests. These emails typically contain information a user wants or needs and have the highest open rates across all categories of email.

• On average, 45% of user actions within a web application trigger a transactional email.
• The average web application sends 631,000 transactional emails a month.
• 93% of web applications expect their transactional email volume to increase in the next year.

Percentage of Web Applications That Rank Transaction Email as “Important or Very Important” for:

• Customer Acquisition: 79.1%
• Customer Retention: 89.89%
• Marketing: 71.5%

Web Application User Actions Supported by Transactional Email

Percentage of web apps supporting:

• Signups / Subscriptions: 80.5%
• Purchase / Order / Shipping Confirmations: 49.8%
• Password Recovery / Changes: 76.5%
• Friend / Follower Requests & Confirmations: 28.0%
• Daily Deals / Offers: 19.1%
• Location-Based Check-ins: 4.1%
• Lead Distribution: 16.0%

Most Important Customer Communication Channels

As ranked by web applications

• Email: 77%
• Phone: 11.8%
• SMS / Text: 1.4%
• Chat / IM: 1%
• Other: 8.7%

Target Audience of Web Applications Surveyed

• Customers: 37.9%
• Businesses: 25.5%
• Both: 25.5%

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