Choose Your Send Method

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

Explain send classifications.
Describe email send methods in Marketing Cloud Engagement.

Send Methods in Marketing Cloud Engagement

Marketing Cloud Engagement is a powerful platform with many ways to send messages to your customers. To decide which method is best, it’s important to know your options. This module is your guide to the send methods available in Marketing Cloud Engagement.

What’s Your Send Classification?

Before you decide which send method to use in Marketing Cloud Engagement, it’s helpful to understand the CAN-SPAM send classifications: commercial and transactional.

Commercial messages are sent to subscribers who have opted in to receive marketing content from your brand. For example, a newsletter or sales promotion.

Transactional messages often include necessary information sent in response to a specific user action, and don’t require a subscriber to opt in to receive your content. For example, identity validation, password reset, or shipping notifications.

Once you know how your message should be classified, you can consider how to send it.

Which Send Method Should You Use?

Let’s review the two send methods available in Marketing Cloud Engagement: audience-driven and event-driven sends.

Audience-Driven Sends

Audience-driven sends are emails sent to a preselected audience at a specific time. It might be helpful to think of these as marketer-driven emails because you control the who and the when. These messages can be built and sent using Email Studio, Content Builder, Single Sends in Journey Builder, or using an automation in Automation Studio. When scheduled to send, Marketing Cloud Engagement assembles and validates the audience, builds the email messages using information from that audience, and sends each message to those lucky subscribers.

Event-Driven Sends

Event-driven sends are emails sent to one or more subscribers based on an external event, a specific user action, or an activity within Salesforce. Let’s review the types of event-driven sends within Marketing Cloud Engagement.

Transactional Send Emails

Emails using the transactional send classification are sent immediately to a specific person based on an action like requesting a password reset from a website. The goal of these messages is to get to the inbox of a specific person—very quickly. Transactional Send Journey emails are triggered via REST API (asynchronous).

Email Studio Triggered Sends

Email Studio triggered sends can be classified as transactional or commercial and are typically created for integration-based solutions. Classic triggered send messages are triggered using the external key of the send activity using either SOAP API (asynchronous, synchronous) or MessageDefinitionSends REST API (asynchronous, synchronous).

Here is an example of the flow for this send method.

Flow chart for transactional triggered send event.

Event	Message Sent
A customer requests a password reset from their website.	The message is triggered via API and immediately sent to a specific customer.

There are two more types of event-driven sends that are based on internal or external decisions. Let’s review.

Behavioral Triggered Sends

An abandoned cart email is a good example of an email sent based on an external factor, like customer website behavior. These emails aren’t triggered immediately after someone leaves an item in the cart, they are triggered based on predetermined criteria. In other words, there’s a decision that takes place before an API call is sent. These types of emails can be sent using behavioral triggers in Journey Builder or through another API service.

Here is an example.

Flow chart for event-driven sends with an external decision.

Event	Decision before API	Message Sent
A customer is shopping on a website and adds a backpack to their cart. The customer doesn’t complete the purchase.	The event is evaluated by predetermined rules—for example, trigger one day after an item remains in a cart. When the event qualifies, an API call is sent to Marketing Cloud Engagement.	After the request has been made, a triggered send message is queued, built, and then sent to the customer.

Journey Builder Triggered Sends

Journey Builder emails are sent to customers based on a variety of events, from AI-driven decisions to data added in Salesforce CRM. When you create an email activity in Journey Builder, a triggered send activity is automatically created behind the scenes. However, emails aren’t sent until a specific internal decision is made. Let’s review an example.

Flow chart for event-driven sends with a Salesforce decision.

Event	Salesforce Decision	Message Sent
A customer is added to a welcome journey after completing a sign-up form on a website.	An Einstein Send Time Optimization activity is added before the planned email send activity within a journey.	When the optimal send time is reached, the Email Send Activity is queued, built, and then the email is sent to that subscriber.

Ready for Send Off

When considering which send method to use, keep in mind who you’re sending to and what’s driving your send—you or an action taken by the customer. Bottom line: If you let the goals of your message guide your decision, it’ll be smooth sending.