Timing Matters: When to Send Transactional Emails
Figuring out the right time to send transactional emails seems like a no-brainer: after the user’s transactional action.
But the further you get away from the transaction itself, the more unclear the right timing is for sending a transactional email.
Today, we’ll cover four examples of when to send transactional emails:

Starting out with a prominent “Thanks”, this email confirms all the basic information about the order. Extra details, like a delivery window, and setting up expectations for the shipping confirmation to follow, are a nice touch to the whole Huckberry purchase experience.
The confirmation email is your opportunity to provide your customer with personal confidence about the transaction that just occurred — and build a nugget of trust in your brand. That all relies on the email coming through, right after purchase.

You can send these emails in Customer.io by setting up an Event Triggered Campaign to send out a single message that’s triggered upon a reset request by the user.

Dunning timing sequence for Person A

Dunning timing sequence for Person B
Timing suggestion:
Create several emails, giving customers multiple chances to solve credit card issues. But keep those payment platform capabilities in mind so you’re not sending more emails than necessary. Here’s a basic schedule you can use as a starting point:

If nonpayment means that you’re going to delete or block access to an account, it’s helpful to provide a window for when that will happen. Take this example from Help Scout, which is sent seven days before an account is deleted for nonpayment, with directions on how to keep the account open.


What you’re going to order for delivery is a decision that takes minutes, not hours or days. Buying eyeglasses, on the other hand, is a bigger, longer-term decision than what to eat in an hour — you have to live with these on your face! So it makes sense that Warby Parker sends this transactional email one day after cart abandonment.
For larger-ticket items or other purchases that may take a bit longer to consider (such as subscription products), you may want to consider a drip sequence triggered off the initial abandonment event, staggered throughout a few days.
Here’s a sample schedule:

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In Customer.io, you can add delays in a campaign workflow to create a cart abandonment series that stops sending once the purchase has been made. Like this:
- order confirmation emails
- password reset emails
- dunning emails
- abandoned cart emails
Transactional Timing Cases: ASAP
You know you don’t want to leave someone waiting for more than a few minutes to get a password reset email — or wondering where their order confirmation is. The timing for sending these transactional emails is very straightforward — triggered upon your customer’s purchase or request. Timing suggestion: Immediately upon triggerOrder confirmation email timing
After completing a purchase, the customer needs an order confirmation email ASAP. Most people expect this email to come through within minutes. Here’s an example from outdoor gear outlet Huckberry:
Password reset email timing
Your password reset email also needs to go out immediately. Otherwise, your customers can’t log in right when they want to. Forgetting a password is already annoying and disruptive, and any delay in getting back on track will increase a customer’s frustration. For the business, this event is make-or-break in terms of losing meaningful engagement and trust in your product. Plus, forgetting passwords happens often (the average customer has 37 password reset emails in their inbox at any time, according to research from Dashlane). It’s one of the most important transactional emails people receive as well as the most straightforward. Send immediately with a simple, clear call to action. Here’s a great password reset email example from Slack — it’s branded and arrives immediately upon requesting a reset:
Transactional Timing Cases: It Depends
Dunning email timing
Dunning emails ensure you’ll be paid for the products or services that you provided and also significantly reduce customer churn. These emails are especially relevant to recurring revenue businesses. The most basic dunning email you can send is a simple notification and request to update billing information, triggered by a failed credit card charge. Beyond this, the timing of pre-dunning and dunning messages can depend on many factors, including:- whether your payment platforms already automatically updates expiration dates on card
- how your payments platform retries a card
- how many messages you want to send
- the cost to your business of a delinquent customer
- your billing cycles

Dunning timing sequence for Person A

Dunning timing sequence for Person B
- Pre-dunning 1: Customer enters the delinquency segment with one month until expiry and triggers email.
- Pre-dunning 2: The next email is triggered a week before expiry.
- Dunning: The third email will arrive on the day of expiry or charge failure.
- Post-dunning: A final email is sent a few days after expiry or charge failure (with a warning that the customer’s account will be deactivated due to credit card failure).
- Pre-dunning email 1: Feb. 2
- Pre-dunning email 2: Feb. 23
- Dunning email: Mar. 7


Cart abandonment email timing
When a customer puts something in their cart, it’s a strong behavioral signal that they are interested in buying that product. It could be that they need more time to think about it, forgot about the cart, or stopped for some other reason. Timing for a single cart abandonment message can depend on what you’re selling. For instance, this email from Grubhub, a food delivery service, came in a few minutes after I’d left their site without ordering:
- 1st email: Sent within a few hours of the customer abandoning an item in their cart. This message reminds the customer of your product while they’re still potentially in the buying mood.
- 2nd email: Sent within 24 hours of cart abandonment, giving customers a night to sleep on the decision.
- 3rd email: Sent within seven days of cart abandonment. This is your last ditch effort to entice the customer back to their shopping cart and can be an opportunity for offering a discount as an incentive.
- cart is abandoned
- after 20 minutes, 1st email
- after 1 more day, 2nd email (incentive: get a free month with signup)
- after 2 more days, 3rd email (incentive: get a free month with signup)
- after 3 more days, 4th email (incentive: try one month free, no subscription)

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