Transactional and Service Email

Use this skill only after applying the 00-email-marketing-guardrails skill (../00-email-marketing-guardrails/SKILL.md).

What and why

A transactional email delivers essential information tied to a user action, purchase, account, security event, or service relationship rather than a marketing conversion. [BRAZE-TRANS-01][MC-PERM-01]

When and where

• Trigger immediately from the authoritative system event and send only to the affected recipient. [BRAZE-TRIG-01][BRAZE-TRANS-01]
• Use a dedicated transactional stream and template so essential information is not delayed or obscured by promotional content; where infrastructure permits, separate transactional and marketing traffic for independent reputation control. [BRAZE-TRANS-01][AWS-SES-SEP-01]

How

• Put the essential fact and required action first: what happened, item/account, amount or status, timestamp, next step, support path, and security guidance where relevant. [BRAZE-TRANS-01]
• Keep the subject and sender accurate and recognizable, and never disguise marketing as a receipt, security alert, or reply. [FTC-01]
• Keep pure transactional messages free of marketing content; if commercial content changes the primary purpose, apply marketing consent and opt-out rules. [BRAZE-TRANS-01][FTC-01]
• Validate all dynamic data, prevent raw merge-tag exposure, and test links and rendering before deployment. [LIT-QA-01][LIT-TEST-01]
• Monitor delivery success, latency, bounces, authentication, support contacts, completion of the required action, and failure/retry paths. [GMAIL-03][MC-REPORT-01][AWS-SES-MON-01]