Transactional email or no?

[BMelville]

We are a non-profit org. and have received an internal request to begin sending monthly emails to contacts in our partner network (they do pay to be part of this network). The email message asks something along the lines of "As our partners, we ask you to share these resources with your networks to spread understanding and awareness about [xyz]..." Here we ask them to share resources that we link to, which we have published as a Foundation. 

Could this qualify as a transactional email or do we have to send this type of content as a marketing email?

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @BMelville,

Generally, I don't recommend relying on a forum for legal advice. I'd always recommend to talk to your data privacy officer or legal team to be on the safe side. My reply does not constitute legal advice.

From the piece of text you shared, I would lean towards a categorization as a marketing email. Transactional emails are meant for "commerce receipts, account updates, terms of service changes, and other essential business transactions". https://knowledge.hubspot.com/marketing-email/how-to-use-transactional-email-in-hubspot

If you sharing content with partners is an essential business transaction which is documented within an agreement, then it could qualify as transactional. If not and if there's a chance that some partners would want to unsubscribe and are generally also entitled to do so, then it must be marketing email in my opinion.

Best regards!