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You're talking about Transactional emails? You cant unsubscribe from TRANSACTIONAL emails. That's why they're transactional...not marketing. It's really importa

You're talking about Transactional emails? You cant unsubscribe from TRANSACTIONAL emails. That's why they're transactional...not marketing. It's really important to differentiate that.

darylteo 3y ago
I "know" that. I'm asking how does Google differentiate between a transactional and a non transactional email? They also say in their guidelines > *Marketing messages and subscribed messages* must support one-click unsubscribe, and include a clearly visible unsubscribe link in the message body. So how is Google determining what is a Marketing/Subscribed message? If they're not, then am I required to tack on this header to ALL emails regardless of type or risk getting binned?
- orliesaurus 3y ago
  Ahhh I see what you mean now, but it wasn't clear in your initial question. Gmail's algorithms analyzes, and has been doing over the last ~20 years, a combination of factors to classify emails as promotional or transactional! Nothing in the code itself of your email will indicate that, other than the presence of an unsub link + the rest of the footer (which is the obvious sign that's a marketing email)
- jcrites 3y ago
  If you’re sending transactional emails like password resets or MFA, then the emails will have close to a 100% open rate. This is (likely) an important factor that Google uses to judge whether email is transactional, or more generally whether it is desired by recipients, alongside other factors like having a very low complaint rate.
  - mitthrowaway2 3y ago
    I rarely open 2FA emails, because usually the displayed preview is all I need.
  - MaxGabriel 3y ago
    100% open rate on transactional emails feels too high to me. Something like an e-commerce purchase might kick off multiple emails (purchase made, shipped, arrived), none of which the user opens
    - stubish 3y ago
      Kicking off a chain of emails a user cannot easily opt out of could well be the sort of emails users want to lose. There probably should be a one-click 'stop emailing me' button, for this and future purchases. Which would be a support burden, yes.
      - blowski 3y ago
        We’ve received your order … we’ve taken payment for your order … your order has left our warehouse … your order has arrived in another warehouse … your order is with a delivery driver … all for a $5 cable.
      - plg94 3y ago
        Some of these emails are legally required for online shops. Doesn't matter if the user wants to receive them or not, they _have to_ be sent and actually delivered to the user's inbox.
        persolb 3y ago
        I'm not sure how the 'actually delivered' would be enforced. Does Google have an affirmative requirement to deliver a 3rd parties message? I hope not. My gmail address received 35 emails yesterday (which didn't get spam filtered). All but 3 of those got auto-archived by the filters I have in gmail. I would love google to just do this automatically. Practically I might need another message or two a week that didn't hit my inbox.... but that's fine as long as it's as it is still searchable.
      - behringer 3y ago
        I watch for the subject line. I don't actually care what the content says...
  - quickthrower2 3y ago
    I open way less than 100% of password resets - because some are malicious.
  - JimDabell 3y ago
    > If you’re sending transactional emails like password resets or MFA, then the emails will have close to a 100% open rate. So I can disable a competitor’s email functionality by triggering a whole bunch of password reset requests for all discoverable usernames?
    - renewiltord 3y ago
      If they support SMS 2FA they need to be prepared for this too because it costs a lot. Yeah, so people need to ensure that reset is at least a little hard to abuse. After all, it's a bad experience for their users if they receive a shit ton of reset emails anyway.
      - Breza 3y ago
        Can confirm that last part. I get so many Facebook reset messages, it's a bit ridiculous.
    - jcrites 3y ago
      That could potentially cause them problems, yeah, if you were able to do that endlessly. In practice most companies will have some kind of rate limiting in place around features like that (by IP, cookie, captcha, etc.)
      - JimDabell 3y ago
        IP and cookie-based rate-limiting are trivially bypassed. In fact, any kind of rate-limiting is ineffective here, especially for smaller organisations, because you only need to generate a small fraction of the traffic they normally send out. If they separate transactional mail from other types of mail (something that is frequently recommended), then how many illegitimate password reset emails do you think an attacker needs to trigger to get to, say, a 5% failure rate? Smaller organisations don’t send out an awful lot of transactional email.
        jcrites 3y ago
        True, but modern CAPTCHA rate limiting is not easily bypassed, and a lot of the solutions are free. Together with cookies, you can show the captcha only to visitors that are not already recognized in some way, giving them a limited number of actions before showing the captcha. And regardless of whether you want one on your password reset page, you almost certainly want one on your login page anyway.
LoganDark 3y ago
Well, I wish my ISP would stop marking ads and promotions as "transactional". Just because they have a system that prohibits unsubscribing, doesn't mean they should be allowed to abuse that system.
- 93po 3y ago
  I've had a website that sent me no fewer than 6 emails over the course of 10 days for a single transaction, 5 of which were full of ads and links to their website and products. I emailed them and asked them to stop and their response was there was no way to opt out, they were transactional for new accounts.
  - LoganDark 3y ago
    My ISP constantly sends me emails about "staying safe online" and "the holiday season". At the bottom of the email, it says "THIS IS A SERVICE-RELATED EMAIL", supposedly to excuse the lack of any unsubscribe link. Unfortunately you are no longer allowed to take them to court over this, as their terms of service simply say you are no longer allowed to sue them :) just like all tech companies that know they're committing lawsuit-worthy offenses.
wl 3y ago
Maybe transactional emails don't need an unsubscribe link like marketing emails, but they do need a "not my account; please stop" link to avoid the spam button.
- Semaphor 3y ago
  Lack of opt-in into those will have me keep marking those as spam. Just like those US political newsletters that also don’t feel like they need to verify mails.
  - josephg 3y ago
    US political emails are even more annoying when you aren’t American. I flag all that stuff as spam without hesitation. If you do that, I hope your entire domain ends up flagged as spam.
    - tomjen3 3y ago
      I had the idea to do a 1 dollar donation and then see the campaign getting flagged for illegal campaign contributions, but that is probably illegal for me as well. (non-us based not us citizen)
- andersa 3y ago
  Why would you be receiving transactional emails for an account that isn't yours?
  - josephg 3y ago
    Hah. I have josephg@gmail. I sometimes wake up to threads of 6+ password reset attempts over an hour from someone who doesn’t know their own email address. For a couple years I got pay stubs. And monthly cell phone invoices from India. I think that email address gets more email for other people than email for me at this point.
    - guiambros 3y ago

You're talking about Transactional emails? You cant unsubscribe from TRANSACTIONAL emails. That's why they're transactional...not marketing. It's really important to differentiate that.

darylteo 3y ago

I "know" that. I'm asking how does Google differentiate between a transactional and a non transactional email? They also say in their guidelines > *Marketing messages and subscribed messages* must support one-click unsubscribe, and include a clearly visible unsubscribe link in the message body. So how is Google determining what is a Marketing/Subscribed message? If they're not, then am I required to tack on this header to ALL emails regardless of type or risk getting binned?

orliesaurus 3y ago
Ahhh I see what you mean now, but it wasn't clear in your initial question. Gmail's algorithms analyzes, and has been doing over the last ~20 years, a combination of factors to classify emails as promotional or transactional! Nothing in the code itself of your email will indicate that, other than the presence of an unsub link + the rest of the footer (which is the obvious sign that's a marketing email)
jcrites 3y ago
If you’re sending transactional emails like password resets or MFA, then the emails will have close to a 100% open rate. This is (likely) an important factor that Google uses to judge whether email is transactional, or more generally whether it is desired by recipients, alongside other factors like having a very low complaint rate.
- mitthrowaway2 3y ago
  I rarely open 2FA emails, because usually the displayed preview is all I need.
- MaxGabriel 3y ago
  100% open rate on transactional emails feels too high to me. Something like an e-commerce purchase might kick off multiple emails (purchase made, shipped, arrived), none of which the user opens
  - stubish 3y ago
    Kicking off a chain of emails a user cannot easily opt out of could well be the sort of emails users want to lose. There probably should be a one-click 'stop emailing me' button, for this and future purchases. Which would be a support burden, yes.
    - blowski 3y ago
      We’ve received your order … we’ve taken payment for your order … your order has left our warehouse … your order has arrived in another warehouse … your order is with a delivery driver … all for a $5 cable.
    - plg94 3y ago
      Some of these emails are legally required for online shops. Doesn't matter if the user wants to receive them or not, they _have to_ be sent and actually delivered to the user's inbox.
      - persolb 3y ago
        I'm not sure how the 'actually delivered' would be enforced. Does Google have an affirmative requirement to deliver a 3rd parties message? I hope not. My gmail address received 35 emails yesterday (which didn't get spam filtered). All but 3 of those got auto-archived by the filters I have in gmail. I would love google to just do this automatically. Practically I might need another message or two a week that didn't hit my inbox.... but that's fine as long as it's as it is still searchable.
    - behringer 3y ago
      I watch for the subject line. I don't actually care what the content says...
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  I open way less than 100% of password resets - because some are malicious.
- JimDabell 3y ago
  > If you’re sending transactional emails like password resets or MFA, then the emails will have close to a 100% open rate. So I can disable a competitor’s email functionality by triggering a whole bunch of password reset requests for all discoverable usernames?
  - renewiltord 3y ago
    If they support SMS 2FA they need to be prepared for this too because it costs a lot. Yeah, so people need to ensure that reset is at least a little hard to abuse. After all, it's a bad experience for their users if they receive a shit ton of reset emails anyway.
    - Breza 3y ago
      Can confirm that last part. I get so many Facebook reset messages, it's a bit ridiculous.
  - jcrites 3y ago
    That could potentially cause them problems, yeah, if you were able to do that endlessly. In practice most companies will have some kind of rate limiting in place around features like that (by IP, cookie, captcha, etc.)
    - JimDabell 3y ago
      IP and cookie-based rate-limiting are trivially bypassed. In fact, any kind of rate-limiting is ineffective here, especially for smaller organisations, because you only need to generate a small fraction of the traffic they normally send out. If they separate transactional mail from other types of mail (something that is frequently recommended), then how many illegitimate password reset emails do you think an attacker needs to trigger to get to, say, a 5% failure rate? Smaller organisations don’t send out an awful lot of transactional email.
      - jcrites 3y ago
        True, but modern CAPTCHA rate limiting is not easily bypassed, and a lot of the solutions are free. Together with cookies, you can show the captcha only to visitors that are not already recognized in some way, giving them a limited number of actions before showing the captcha. And regardless of whether you want one on your password reset page, you almost certainly want one on your login page anyway.

LoganDark 3y ago

Well, I wish my ISP would stop marking ads and promotions as "transactional". Just because they have a system that prohibits unsubscribing, doesn't mean they should be allowed to abuse that system.

93po 3y ago
I've had a website that sent me no fewer than 6 emails over the course of 10 days for a single transaction, 5 of which were full of ads and links to their website and products. I emailed them and asked them to stop and their response was there was no way to opt out, they were transactional for new accounts.
- LoganDark 3y ago
  My ISP constantly sends me emails about "staying safe online" and "the holiday season". At the bottom of the email, it says "THIS IS A SERVICE-RELATED EMAIL", supposedly to excuse the lack of any unsubscribe link. Unfortunately you are no longer allowed to take them to court over this, as their terms of service simply say you are no longer allowed to sue them :) just like all tech companies that know they're committing lawsuit-worthy offenses.

wl 3y ago

Maybe transactional emails don't need an unsubscribe link like marketing emails, but they do need a "not my account; please stop" link to avoid the spam button.

Semaphor 3y ago
Lack of opt-in into those will have me keep marking those as spam. Just like those US political newsletters that also don’t feel like they need to verify mails.
- josephg 3y ago
  US political emails are even more annoying when you aren’t American. I flag all that stuff as spam without hesitation. If you do that, I hope your entire domain ends up flagged as spam.
  - tomjen3 3y ago
    I had the idea to do a 1 dollar donation and then see the campaign getting flagged for illegal campaign contributions, but that is probably illegal for me as well. (non-us based not us citizen)
andersa 3y ago
Why would you be receiving transactional emails for an account that isn't yours?
- josephg 3y ago
  Hah. I have josephg@gmail. I sometimes wake up to threads of 6+ password reset attempts over an hour from someone who doesn’t know their own email address. For a couple years I got pay stubs. And monthly cell phone invoices from India. I think that email address gets more email for other people than email for me at this point.
  - guiambros 3y ago