Transactional Messaging API Vs Traditional Triggered Sends in SFMC

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When we create triggered send messages in Marketing Cloud, there is an option to set the message's priority. This is a drop-down which is always set to medium by default. The other two options allow you to set the priority to either high or low. 







Only a couple of months ago, I had no idea what this option meant and I never paid attention to it or tried changing it. I do know from experience that in many of the projects I worked it was set to high and for a small number of accounts, I noticed it to be set to medium. 

Recently I was tasked to look into an issue where the account creation emails were taking more than 5 minutes to reach the customers' inbox. These were transactional emails that were created either at the point of sale or by customers themselves when they created their accounts online. This resulted in a bad customer experience. When I searched for that email in SFMC, I noticed that it was a triggered send, the send classification was Transactional and priority was set to medium. In my research of online documentation and my own testing, I have found that medium-priority triggered messages can take up to 6 minutes to reach the recipient's inbox. 

Here are some useful resources on time taken by different priority options:

https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sf.mc_es_triggered_emails.htm&type=5

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/unleash-your-salesforce-marketing-cloud-power-8-features-hilaire/

The easiest solution to this problem was to set the priority in the send options to high. High-priority messages are sent immediately in real-time. However, when I did further research I found that each high-priority triggered email consumes 4 super messages. It may be an acceptable solution for a business that does not send too many messages. However, for a business that sends thousands of messages, this may not be an ideal option as it will be expensive.

Here are some useful resources on data usage by different message types:

https://www.salesforce.com/content/dam/web/en_us/www/assets/pdf/misc/super-messages-excluding-sms-mms-september-1-2022.pdf

https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sf.mc_overview_data_usage.htm&type=5

Other examples of email messages which one may want to send immediately to a customer are order confirmation, return confirmation, password reset etc.

So the answer to this problem - where you want your triggered messages in Marketing Cloud to be sent immediately to a contact but you do not want the message to consume 4 super messages is to use Transactional Messaging API. Transactional messages are messages that are sent as a result of an activity occurring. Transactional messages are sent immediately and in an automated fashion. For example, you can use transactional messages to send order confirmation messages, password reset emails, and bank balance inquiry messages.

Advantages of Transactional Messaging API

  • The API runs on an updated messaging platform, which improves scale and performance
  • Messages are sent instantly and real time
  • Consumes only one super message
Drawbacks of Transactional Messaging API
  • User interface is not as robust as a triggered send or a journey email. There is no option to select an exclusion list or script.
  • There is also no option to add the email to send log. However if send log is selected at account level, it should be alright.
  • Messages sent through Transactional Messaging API do not appear in Email tracking UI and so you will not be able to see what / how many emails were sent, bounced, opened, clicked etc. This information do appears in data views and tracking extract. You can easily setup Event Notification Service to see sent, not sent, bounce email information in the user interface. Here is a great article on how to setup Event Notification Service. https://www.salesforceben.com/monitoring-transactional-emails-in-salesforce-marketing-cloud/
Useful Resources:



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