Is it okay to send transactional emails to role-based email addresses like info@ or order@?
Matthew Whittaker
Co-founder & CTO, Suped
Published 26 Jun 2025
Updated 15 Aug 2025
6 min read
When managing email campaigns, a common question arises: Is it acceptable to send transactional emails to role-based email addresses like info@ or order@? Many email service providers (ESPs) advise against sending to these addresses due to potential deliverability issues and risks to sender reputation.
However, the context of the email, especially whether it is transactional or marketing, significantly changes the answer. Transactional emails, by their nature, are expected by the recipient, which can mitigate some of the risks associated with role-based addresses. Understanding this distinction is crucial for maintaining good sender reputation and ensuring your important messages reach their intended audience.
The nature of role-based addresses
Role-based email addresses, such as info@, sales@, support@, or admin@, are designed for departmental use rather than individual communication. They typically forward to multiple recipients, or are monitored by a team, making them less predictable than personal email addresses. This characteristic leads to a higher likelihood of issues like spam complaints, especially if the recipients are not expecting the email or if the message is perceived as irrelevant to their role.
The main concern with these addresses for bulk email sending is that they rarely have a clear opt-in associated with a single person. This means the recipients have not explicitly consented to receive marketing materials, making them prone to mark emails as spam. Moreover, role-based addresses are often converted into spam traps by mailbox providers to catch senders with poor list hygiene or acquisition practices. Hitting a spam trap can severely damage your domain reputation and lead to blocklisting.
Many email marketers adhere to strict rules to avoid role-based addresses altogether due to these risks. However, businesses sometimes have legitimate reasons to send emails to them, especially if their target audience, like interior designers who use order@ addresses for purchases, commonly use them. This highlights the need to differentiate between email types.
Role-based addresses
Generic addresses for departments or functions (e.g., info@, support@).
Recipients: Often multiple people, making explicit consent difficult.
Assigned to a specific individual (e.g., john.doe@example.com).
Recipients: Typically a single person, making consent clearer.
Risk: Lower risk of complaints if opt-in is clear and content is relevant.
Transactional vs. marketing email: a crucial distinction
The key to sending emails to role-based addresses without damaging your sender reputation lies in distinguishing between transactional and marketing messages. Transactional emails are typically triggered by a user's action and contain information crucial to a completed or ongoing transaction. Examples include order confirmations, shipping updates, password resets, or account notifications. Recipients expect these emails, making them less likely to mark them as spam.
In contrast, marketing emails are promotional in nature, designed to encourage a commercial transaction or to build brand awareness. They include newsletters, special offers, or product announcements. Sending these types of emails to role-based addresses is highly risky, as it often violates the implicit (or explicit) consent of the recipient and can lead to high spam complaint rates and blocklisting.
Many email laws, such as the CAN-SPAM Act in the U.S. and GDPR in Europe, differentiate between these two types of emails, with stricter consent requirements for marketing communications. For example, marketing emails must include an unsubscribe link, whereas transactional emails often do not require one because they are service-related.
Transactional vs. marketing email
Transactional: User-initiated, service-related, expected content. Focuses on specific actions (e.g., order@ for order updates).
Marketing: Promotional, unsolicited, aims to generate sales. Requires explicit consent and unsubscribe options.
Sending any email to a role-based address carries some inherent risk. Email providers often view these addresses as potential spam traps or as indicators of poor list quality if unsolicited emails are sent to them. This can lead to your emails being directed to the spam folder, or worse, your sending IP address or domain being added to a blocklist.
However, for transactional emails, this risk is significantly reduced because the recipient usually expects the message. For instance, if an interior designer places an order and provides order@designfirm.com as their contact for order updates, they anticipate receiving those updates. When expectations are met, the likelihood of a spam complaint decreases dramatically. It's about respecting the recipient's intent.
To safeguard your sender reputation, it is a best practice to keep your transactional and marketing email streams entirely separate. This includes using different subdomains, or even different IP addresses, for each type of email. This separation ensures that any potential issues with one stream, such as marketing emails incurring complaints, do not negatively affect the deliverability of your critical transactional messages.
Factor
Impact on deliverability
Spam complaints (unsolicited marketing)
Leads to lower sender reputation, increased spam folder placement. Could result in blocklisting.
Spam traps (old or generic addresses)
Signals poor list hygiene. Hitting these results in immediate blacklist penalties.
Multiple recipients / shared inboxes
Increases chance of someone marking as spam or ignoring, even if email is expected.
Implementing effective sending strategies
The recommended approach is to implement a strict segmentation strategy within your email platform. This involves categorizing your contacts to ensure that role-based addresses only receive transactional communications, while being automatically excluded from any marketing-related sends. Many ESPs allow for suppression lists or segmentation rules that can automate this process, minimizing manual effort and human error.
For enhanced security and deliverability, it is also advisable to use separate sending domains or subdomains for your transactional and marketing emails. For instance, mail.yourdomain.com could be used for marketing, and transactions.yourdomain.com for transactional messages. This practice isolates the reputation of your transactional sends from that of your marketing sends, providing a buffer against potential deliverability issues.
Furthermore, ensuring your transactional emails are properly authenticated with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC is paramount. Proper authentication helps mailbox providers verify that your emails are legitimate and not spoofed, which is crucial for all email types, especially those that might otherwise be viewed with suspicion. Regular blocklist monitoring is also important.
Example DNS record for a transactional subdomainDNS
Navigating role-based addresses for deliverability
Sending transactional emails to role-based email addresses like info@ or order@ is generally acceptable, provided you implement careful segmentation and adhere to email best practices. The critical factor is user expectation: if the email is a necessary part of a transaction initiated by the recipient, it is less likely to be marked as spam.
By clearly separating your transactional and marketing email streams and leveraging dedicated subdomains or IPs, you can ensure that your essential communications reach their intended recipients without compromising your overall sender reputation. Always prioritize recipient experience and consent to maintain optimal deliverability.
Views from the trenches
Best practices
Maintain strict separation between transactional and marketing email sending streams to protect your sender reputation.
Utilize dedicated subdomains or IP addresses for transactional emails to isolate their deliverability performance.
Ensure all transactional emails are highly relevant and expected by the recipient to minimize spam complaints.
Regularly monitor your email deliverability metrics for both streams, paying close attention to bounce and complaint rates.
Implement robust email authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC for all your sending domains.
Common pitfalls
Sending marketing emails to role-based addresses without explicit consent, which significantly increases spam complaint rates.
Failing to segment role-based addresses from marketing lists, leading to deliverability issues across your entire sending program.
Not monitoring deliverability metrics for transactional emails, missing early signs of problems like blocklisting.
Using the same sending infrastructure for both transactional and marketing emails, allowing one to negatively impact the other.
Ignoring the potential for role-based addresses to turn into spam traps, which can severely damage your sender reputation.
Expert tips
Leverage suppression lists to automatically exclude role-based addresses from marketing campaigns while allowing transactional sends.
Educate your team on the crucial distinction between transactional and marketing emails to prevent misclassification.
Consider a double opt-in process for all new subscribers, regardless of email type, for enhanced consent verification.
Continuously review your list hygiene to remove inactive or problematic role-based addresses before they cause issues.
If a role-based address is provided for a transaction, confirm with the recipient if they prefer a personal address for marketing.
Marketer view
Marketer from Email Geeks says communicating with customers how they want to be communicated with is essential, and transactional emails to role-based addresses are often expected.
2020-10-23 - Email Geeks
Marketer view
Marketer from Email Geeks says transactional mail for things like order confirmations should be fine and are indeed expected by recipients of role-based addresses.
