How large senders can move from sandbox to production using Amazon SES?

Amazon SES: Email marketing has a potential ROI of $42 for every dollar spent (source link) making it a great tool for businesses whether it is for marketing campaigns, transactional notifications, or other communications. Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES) is a cloud email service provider that can integrate into any application for bulk email sending. Amazon SES is an email service that supports a variety of use cases like transactional emails, system alerts, marketing/promotional/bulk emails, streamlined internal communications, and emails triggered by CRM system as a few examples.

Your journey with AWS began with creating an AWS account and your journey with Amazon SES likely began in the sandbox environment. To help prevent fraud and abuse, and to help protect your reputation as a sender, Amazon SES places all new accounts in the Amazon SES sandbox. Sandbox helps protect accounts from unauthorized use, accidental sends, and unexpected charges and is a safe space for testing with limited sending capabilities – up to 200 emails per day and a rate of 1 email per second.

Transitioning from Sandbox to Production: When you are ready to scale up to production, the process involves a few steps:

1. 1. Verify your email or domain: Prior to requesting production access, you have to verify an email address or sending domain. You can do that by clicking on Configuration > Verified Identities and click on Create identity button
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   2. Access the set up page: On the Account dashboard page click on Get started (image 2.1) or go to Get set up page on the navigation frame on the left.
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   3. Before requesting for production access, it is important to test throttling, bounce handling, and unsubscribe handling.
   4. Click on Request production access
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   5. Production access form: This brings you to the page where you furnish details to get production access
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         2. Enter if your mail type is marketing or transactional. Choose the option that best represents the types of messages you plan on sending. A marketing email promotes your products and services, while a transactional email is an immediate, trigger-based communication.
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         3. Provide the URL for your website to help us better understand the kind of content you plan on sending.
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         4. Use case description: Here is where you mention the following:
            1. Description: What does your company do and what do you plan on communicating with your users/subscribers through email?
            2. Use cases: Describe at a minimum, 1 or 2 of your use cases here and be descriptive of the use-cases you plan to use SES as a sender. You can also paste what a sample email for this use case looks like (please remove sensitive information)
            3. Mailing list: Describe how you plan to build or acquire your mailing list.
            4. Bounces & complaints: Describe how you handle bounces & complaints.
               1. Amazon SES provides you with resources to manage this. This is a guide on how you can set up notifications for bounces and complaints. After you are notified, how do you plan on handling the bounces and complaints?
            5. Unsubscribe: Describe how your email recipients can opt out of receiving email from you. Amazon SES provides subscription management and you can read more about it here. Additionally, you can read more about the latest email sender requirements here.
         5. Best practices:
            1. Success of your email program depends on various metrics such as bounces, complaints and message quality as listed here. Test your setup and your bounce/complaint processing before requesting production access.
            2. Mention if your account was denied earlier and the reasons for denial (any additional information you can provide will help speed up the process).
            3. Provide your daily and weekly email volumes.
            4. Provide your peak volume throughput or TPS (transactions/emails per second).
            5. We consider each request carefully. Therefore, it is important to provide specifics and not vague messages like “Please remove from sandbox and move to production” or “Please increase sending limit to 40 emails/sec”
            6. More best practices here.

Conclusion: Successfully moving from the sandbox to production in Amazon SES marks a significant step in leveraging email communication for your business. It’s not just about scaling your email capabilities; it’s about enhancing your engagement with customers and prospects through reliable, efficient email delivery. Continuously monitor your email performance, stay updated with Amazon SES features, and adapt your strategy to ensure your email campaigns remain effective and compliant. With these steps and insights, you’re well-equipped to make the most out of Amazon SES, turning it into a vital component of your digital communication strategy. Once your request has been approved, you’ll receive a confirmation from Amazon SES, and you’ll be ready to start sending emails to real recipients.

About the authors:

Medha Karri is a Senior Product Manager at Amazon Simple Email Service at AWS. He is a technology enthusiast having varied experience in product management and software development. He is passionate to simplify complex technical solutions for customers and enjoys playing Xbox in his free time.

Vinay Ujjini is an Amazon Pinpoint and Amazon Simple Email Service Worldwide Principal Specialist Solutions Architect at AWS. He has been solving customer’s omni-channel challenges for over 15 years. He is an avid sports enthusiast and in his spare time, enjoys playing tennis & cricket.