# Understanding sub-accounts and channels

Apteco Email provides separate sub-accounts for promotional and contractual communications to ensure proper unsubscribe management. You must configure these sub-accounts with different channels to prevent customers from accidentally unsubscribing from essential service emails when they opt out of marketing communications.

## Apteco Email account types

When you choose Apteco Email, you receive two sub-accounts to ensure clear separation between your marketing and transactional communications.

- **Promotional sub-account**: Allows opt-outs and supports both marketing and transactional templates
- **Contractual sub-account**: Only allows transactional email templates. This prevents recipients from unsubscribing because Apteco automatically adds an unsubscribe link to marketing templates, which is not appropriate for contractual emails

See [Email templates: Marketing vs. Transactional](<https://help.apteco.com/en/orbit/campaigns/apteco-email/marketing-and-transactional-email-templates/index.md>).

## Apteco Email channels

You must configure each sub-account with a different channel to maintain proper unsubscribe management:

- **Promotional channel**: Uses your promotional sub-account
- **Contractual channel**: Uses your contractual sub-account

> [!NOTE]
>
> Unsubscribes are account-based, not channel-based. When someone unsubscribes from one email, they unsubscribe from receiving all emails from that sub-account.

### What happens if you use the same account for both channels

If you configure both promotional and contractual channels with the same sub-account details, unsubscribing from any email affects all communications from that account.

> [!NOTE]
>
> **This example scenario shows why this setup causes problems**
>
> 1. You set up both channels using the same sub-account
> 2. A customer receives a promotional email with a mandatory unsubscribe link
> 3. The customer clicks unsubscribe
> 4. They are now unsubscribed from all future emails from that account - including important contractual emails like order confirmations

### Template unsubscribe behaviour

The template type determines unsubscribe link requirements:

- **Marketing templates**: Always include a mandatory unsubscribe link
- **Transactional templates**: Don't normally include unsubscribe links, but if you add one manually, unsubscribing has the same account-wide impact

See [Unsubscribe link validation](<https://help.apteco.com/en/orbit/campaigns/apteco-email/unsubscribe-link-validation/index.md>).

> [!TIP]
>
> Always use your dedicated sub-accounts for their intended purposes:
>
> - **Promotional sub-account**: Only for promotional channels
> - **Contractual sub-account**: Only for contractual channels
>
> This ensures customers can unsubscribe from marketing emails whilst continuing to receive essential service communications.