- May 5, 2025
- Posted by: administrator
- Category: Blog
Bulk email, often referred to as marketing or promotional email, is a classification for senders who send a large number of emails in a short period of time. On the other hand, transactional email occurs only during a specific transactional event, such as a single invoice, password reset, alerts, or other emails that are crucial for the product/service to send as part of the basic actions of operating the service. Now, let’s dig deeper into how the two types of email differentiate.
Bulk Email and Bulk Senders
Each inbox operates with their own rubric as to what constitutes a bulk sender. For instance, if you send a single or multiple emails to roughly 5,000 recipients with @gmail.com in one day, you fall under Google’s Bulk Sender rules. Google sets its threshold at 5,000 emails, but Yahoo! has a more liberal interpretation/cutoff.
Basically, if you’re sending a single email to many recipients, you’re considered a bulk sender. It’s important to use email best practices when sending messages because once you’re labeled a bulk sender, you’re always a bulk sender. This means you’ll forever be subject to bulk sender rules.
Per Google: A bulk sender is any email sender that sends close to 5,000 messages or more to personal Gmail accounts within a 24-hour period. Messages sent from the same primary domain count toward the 5,000 limit.
Sending domains: When Google calculates the 5,000-message limit, [we] they count all messages sent from the same primary domain. For example, every day you send 2,500 messages from yourdomain.com and 2,500 messages from promotions.yourdomain.com to personal Gmail accounts. You’re considered a bulk sender because all 5,000 messages were sent from the same primary domain: yourdomain.com.
Per Yahoo: In order to better enforce anti-spam policies, Yahoo does not disclose the number of recipients or emails that can be sent at one time. If you’ve received a notification that a limit has been met, you’ll need to wait a set amount of time before you can send more emails. Most sending limit notifications inform you of how long you’ll have to wait.
What Is Transactional Email?
Transactional emails are messages sent in response to an action a user/customer takes on a specific site, app, or interface. These emails contain content specific to that user and are typically sent as stand-alone messages. They are referred to as transactional because they’re considered necessary to provide a functional account/service to the user and part of the daily transactions that occur in that account. Common examples include:
- Password reset emails
- Payment invoices
- Account creation/activation emails
- Shipping confirmations
- Welcome emails
- Purchase receipts
- Alert notifications
- Product and software updates
- Order confirmation emails
- Reservation confirmations
Transactional emails are a common and accepted practice. Recipients typically expect to receive them when completing certain online actions as part of a confirmation process or as part of the functioning of the service.