Should customer onboarding emails be operational?

[Jeff_Smith3]

There have been some great threads on here about operational email best practices, but I didn't see anything specifically addressing onboarding emails. We have a flow set up that delivers six emails over a 90-day period (from the initial welcome email to a final customer survey email) when a new customer closes with us. I have been debating whether these are actually operational. The emails aren't really critical, and they're not marketing our products, but they do provide info that may be helpful for a new customer to know. Any thoughts?

[Anonymous]

Our rule of thumb is that if the email content is written with strong ties to/is relevant to the customer's transaction, then we can call it operational. By the sounds of your description, it sounds like they'd still be commercial emails.

[Kristen_Malkov1 · Accepted solution]

I don't think I would make these operational. There's always a chance that someone is at a new company, but has used your product before and doesn't necessarily want to opt-into your emails. Additionally, it's good to keep in mind that something you deem as "necessary" isn't necessarily perceived the same way by your customer. We do not make any of our onboarding emails operational. I think you might see yourselves marked as 'spam' more frequently if you do this.

[Jeff_Smith3]

Great insight, thank you both. It sounds like the consensus is that they don't qualify as operational. That will subject them to the communication limits, but we'll have to live with that. Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Hey Jeff, I'd consider one alternative which would be to have appropriate unsubscribe information in the email, but have them ignore communication limits. This way you give your reader a choice as to what they receive, but you can also do your best to get what you consider to be useful messaging to their inbox.

[Jeff_Smith3]

Dory,

Is it not all or nothing? Operational emails ignore subscription settings AND communications limits. Marketing emails block unsubscribes and those who reached their limits. Can I set it so that marketing emails associated to a specific program will block unsubscribes but ignore communication limits? 

[Anonymous]

Jeff, yes.. in the Schedule tab of any smart campaign you can uncheck/check the "Block non-operational emails" box which will permit this.

If the box is unchecked, then your email will still obey all subscription rules in Marketo but will ignore communication limits. That email will still count towards their total for the day or week, but will still allow the email to send if they're over. Hope this helps!