Transactional Emails

How transactional emails differ from campaigns

	Campaigns	Transactional emails
Trigger	Manual or scheduled send	Automatic, fired by a subscriber event
Audience	Lists, segments, or both	A single subscriber in a single list context
Templates	Any number of reusable templates	Exactly one template per role
Approvals	Optional review workflow	Takes effect on save — no pending state

Transactional email roles

Roles are a closed set— each corresponds to a specific moment in the subscriber lifecycle. You can edit the content of each role’s template, but you cannot add new roles.

Role	When it fires	Gated by
Confirmation	A subscriber signs up to a list with Double Opt-In Requiredenabled — the email contains the DOI link	List setting DoubleOptInRequired
Welcome	A subscriber’s membership becomes Subscribed— either immediately (non-DOI list) or after confirming (DOI list)	List setting SendWelcomeEmail
Unsubscribe confirmation	A subscriber successfully unsubscribes from a list — sent as an acknowledgement of the action	List setting SendUnsubscribeConfirmation
Resend confirmation	A pending subscriber requests another confirmation email — sent when the original DOI link expired or was lost	List setting SendResendConfirmation

Toggles are per-list

Whether a given role actually sends is determined by the list the subscriber belongs to. This means you can, for example, enable welcome emails for your main customer list but skip them for an internal team list.

Factory defaults

Every role ships with a tested default template covering:

• A sensible subject line
• HTML and plain-text bodies with merge fields for subscriber name, list name, and the action URL (confirmation or unsubscribe link)
• GDPR-compliant footer text

These defaults are loaded on first run and are what the Reset to defaultsaction restores. You don’t need to edit anything to get a working system — the defaults are production-ready.

Editing a template

1. Open the CampaignCanvas section and navigate to Settings → Transactional Emails.
2. Pick the role you want to edit. You see the current subject, from address (inherited from tenant defaults), HTML body, and plain-text body.
3. Edit the fields. Merge tokens work exactly like in campaigns — see the available merge fields below.
4. Click Send test to preview against your own email address.
5. Save. Changes take effect immediately for the next event that fires this role.

Available merge fields

Transactional emails use the same merge-field engine as campaigns, but the context is a single subscriber plus the list that triggered the event.

Token	Resolves to
{{subscriber.email}}	The subscriber’s email address
{{subscriber.firstName}}	First name (empty if not captured)
{{subscriber.lastName}}	Last name (empty if not captured)
{{list.name}}	The name of the mailing list that triggered the email
{{action.url}}	The role-specific action URL — DOI confirmation link for Confirmation, unsubscribe link for Unsubscribe confirmation, etc.
{{site.name}}	Your Umbraco site name (from tenant settings)

Custom fields are also available via {{subscriber.fields.{alias}}} — same syntax as in campaigns.

Resetting a template

If you’ve edited a template and want to go back to the factory version, click Reset to defaultson that role’s page. The current body is replaced with the seeded default and the reset is recorded in the audit log (see Audit log).

Reset is immediate

There is no confirmation prompt-and-undo flow — resetting overwrites your edits in place. If you want to keep your custom copy, save it elsewhere before clicking reset.

Audit trail

Every change to a transactional template is recorded in the CampaignCanvas audit log with two distinct actions:

• TransactionalEmailUpdated— logged when an editor saves changes to a role’s template
• TransactionalEmailReset— logged when an editor resets a role back to its factory default

Each entry captures the editor’s identity, timestamp, and role affected — useful for compliance reviews and troubleshooting unexpected template behaviour.

Deliverability and from address

Transactional emails use the same ESP configuration, from address, and domain authentication as campaigns — see Email service providers for setup.

Because these emails are triggered by subscriber action, they typically have very high engagement (open rates over 80% for confirmation emails are normal). This makes them critical for your domain reputation: a broken or misconfigured DOI flow can leave a trail of unopened messages that degrades sender reputation over time. The built-in defaults and the per-list toggle behaviour are designed to avoid that failure mode out of the box.