What happens if you misuse transactional classification?

Misusing transactional classification-labeling marketing emails as transactional to bypass consent requirements, unsubscribe obligations, or suppression lists-creates serious compliance and deliverability consequences. Regulatory bodies can pursue enforcement actions if they determine you're deliberately misclassifying commercial messages. Under CAN-SPAM, violations can result in penalties up to $50,000 per email. GDPR penalties for processing without proper legal basis can reach €20 million or 4% of global revenue. The "but we called it transactional" defense provides zero protection if the content and purpose are clearly promotional.

Deliverability damage often arrives faster than regulatory action. If you're sending marketing content to people who've unsubscribed-using transactional exemptions as the loophole-those recipients will mark your emails as spam. ISPs will see the complaint pattern and downgrade your sender reputation, affecting all your email delivery. Additionally, ESPs take transactional abuse seriously because it puts their shared infrastructure at risk. Misusing transactional classification can lead to account warnings, sending restrictions, or termination from your ESP.

Beyond formal consequences, transactional abuse destroys subscriber trust. Recipients who unsubscribed from marketing but continue receiving promotional content dressed as "transactional" messages will recognize the manipulation. They'll complain more aggressively, share their negative experience publicly, and likely disengage from your brand entirely. The short-term gain of reaching people who opted out is overwhelmed by the long-term damage to deliverability, reputation, and customer relationships. Transactional classification isn't a loophole to exploit-it's a trust extended for legitimate purposes, and abusing it burns your email program from multiple directions.