How can I send transactional email that respects unsubscribe data?

[craig3]

We have an application that sends multiple types of email where some are things like login alerts and others are more analagous to marketing emails, but still sent from our same system with the same transactional email api. We also send email to these same user directly from within Hubspot (not using the API) and a user may choose to unsubscribe from a certain type of email. How can email sent via the transactional email API respect that unsubscription data?

Reading the docs here https://knowledge.hubspot.com/articles/kcs_article/email/can-opted-out-contacts-still-receive-some-t... it sounds like the email will bypass that data and always be sent. In our case this is undesired, as we would be sending email to the user against their wishes.

[Derek_Gervais]

Hi @craig,

So sorry for the double post / confusion. My comment above actually isn't true (which you might have figured out based on your testing). The Single Send API will respect the setting you choose in the UI, and will send/not send to contacts based on their subscription preferences if you're triggering marketing email sends.

[Derek_Gervais]

Hi @craig,

While you're right that 'Transactional email' can refer specifically to the add-on, the Single Send API is just another way to take advantage of the transactional email functionality. Emails sent via the Single Send API are intended to be transactional, and will not respect contacts' opt out preferences. You'll still need to manage that on your end if you intend to use the Single Send API to send marketing emails.

[Derek_Gervais]

Hi @craig,

It's not currently possible to send transactional email that automatically obeys a contact's subscription data. The transactional email tool was designed with only transactional email in mind, so if you were to use the system send marketing emails you would need to suppress sends to opted out contacts prior to triggering the send.

[craig3]

Thanks for your response Derek. I've recently come to learn that what I understood as Hubspot "Transactional Email" functionality is not synonymous with the programatic sending of email. When reading the docs for the single send API, I read the mention of "The use of API requires the Transactional Email add-on" to mean that I needed to send "Transactional Email" as mentioned in my initial post in this thread. Since those seem to be different things, and we can send email via the single send API to any template, and that will respect the unsubscribe list, I think I'm all set here.