A triggered email is an email sent automatically when a specific event occurs, such as account creation, a purchase, or a product milestone. Triggered emails are a foundation of email automation because they respond to user behavior in near real time.
Common Trigger Sources
Triggers can come from product events, commerce events, or user lifecycle actions. Some triggers are marketing oriented, while others are closer to transactional email. In many systems, triggered emails overlap with event based email logic, where the difference is mainly how the trigger is defined and how immediate the send is.
Technical Implementation Patterns
Idempotency is the big idea. Your event pipeline should handle retries without sending duplicates, and your email service should deduplicate using event IDs. If you queue events, monitor backlog so a time-sensitive trigger does not arrive hours late.
Developers often implement triggers using events emitted from the application. These can be delivered to the email system via webhooks or direct API calls. The key is reliability. If the trigger fires twice, users may receive duplicate emails. If it fails silently, a critical message may never send.
Designing Triggered Emails for Action
Triggered emails often perform best when they match the moment. Use contextual subject lines, keep the CTA close to the top, and avoid excessive navigation links. If you include secondary links, ensure they do not distract from the primary action you want the user to take.
Triggered emails typically have a clear next step. Keep the layout simple, ensure the primary CTA is obvious, and test rendering in strict clients. Because these emails often arrive at high-intent moments, small usability issues can translate directly into lost conversions.
Triggered Email and Topol
Topol helps teams create triggered templates that remain stable across clients, with reusable blocks and predictable HTML output that fits well into event-driven systems. Learn more at Topol or create an account at Topol signup.