AWS Messaging Blog
Learning email deliverability with Amazon SES
Emails landing in spam folders? Facing account suspension warnings? This blog post walks you through seven targeted video tutorials that address the most common Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES) deliverability challenges our customers encounter. Each video in this series provides actionable insights which will allow you to gain knowledge on every aspect of email deliverability, improve your email performance and increase your inbox placement rates.
Why email deliverability matters
Poor deliverability can lead to emails landing in spam folders, increase bounce rates, and can trigger account suspension. Email deliverability directly impacts:
- Your sender reputation
- Inbox placement rates
- Customer engagement
- Business revenue
- Compliance with email service provider policies.
Our video series will help you avoid these pitfalls and build a robust email delivery strategy, including onboarding to Amazon SES, choosing your IP, monitoring feedback, reputation, and how to handle unsubscribes, bounces, and complaints.
Onboarding your email solution to Amazon SES
Watch: SES Deliverability learning series: Onboarding your email solution to Amazon SES
What you’ll learn: This video provides a complete migration roadmap for moving your email system to Amazon SES, including domain verification and authentication setup through DKIM, SPF, and DMARC protocols. You’ll learn how to move the account to the production access, acquire and configure dedicated IPs, create and manage configuration sets, and set up Virtual Deliverability Manager for email monitoring. The video also covers the difference between SMTP and API sending methods to explain bulk sender requirements and how to comply with them for successful email delivery.
How this helps with email deliverability: Following SES best practices when onboarding your email system to Amazon SES will help protect your emails from being spoofed, with proactive monitoring using Virtual Deliverability Manager, you can identify issues before they impact delivery, maintaining strong sender reputation and sustained email delivery success.
Choosing the right Amazon SES IP
Watch: SES Deliverability learning series: Choosing the Right Amazon SES IP for Your Email Needs
What you’ll learn: Key differences between shared IPs, dedicated IPs (Managed and Standard), How to choose the right IP environment based on your sending volume and use case, best practices for managing IP reputation, the IP warm-up process and its importance, and shared responsibilities between you and Amazon SES when using dedicated IPs. This video shows you how to rebuild trust with mailbox providers through proper IP management.
How this helps with email deliverability: If your account’s reputation was impacted due to poor sending practices, switching to dedicated IPs can help isolate your reputation and provide better control over your sending environment.
Monitoring email feedback
Watch: Mastering email deliverability: Monitoring email feedback
What you’ll learn: Discover how Amazon SES feedback loops can prevent account pause by alerting you to rising complaint, understanding and analyzing complaint data, utilizing mailbox provider postmaster tools, setting up comprehensive monitoring dashboards, tracking deliverability and engagement metrics, and strategies for emails to reach intended recipients. This video teaches you how to set up systems that alert you to rising complaint rates, bounce rates, and other warning signs before they started to impact your account’s ability to send emails.
How this helps with email deliverability: Proper monitoring is essential for preventing further complaints or bounces that could put your AWS account at risk of termination.
Email reputation with Amazon SES
Watch: Mastering email deliverability: Email Reputation with Amazon SES
What you’ll learn: What email reputation is and why it matters, how email providers evaluate sender reputation, best practices for isolating and managing your reputation, authentication methods to protect your reputation, and effective monitoring techniques for reputation management.
How this helps with email deliverability: Understanding email reputation is important for maintaining a good reputation with mailbox providers.
Handling email unsubscribes
Watch: Mastering email deliverability: Handling email unsubscribes
What you’ll learn: The importance of proper unsubscribe handling, how to remove unsubscribes from your SES mailing lists, the connection between unsubscribes and deliverability rates, strategies to maintain clean email lists, how to identify and prevent mass unsubscribe events, what to do when you see high unsubscribe rates. This video shows you how to properly handle unsubscribes and reduce rates that might trigger spam complaints by mailbox providers or impact your account’s ability to send emails.
How this helps with email deliverability: High unsubscribe rates often indicate content quality issues, sending emails to users who don’t want or expect, list hygiene issue, not having a proper confirmed opt-in, and sending too frequently.
How to handle bounces and boost inbox success
Watch: Mastering Email Deliverability: How to Handle Bounces and Boost Inbox Success
What you’ll learn: Different types of email bounces (soft and hard bounces), What each bounce type indicates about your campaign health, practical strategies to manage and reduce bounce rates, best practices for cleaning your email lists, how to implement effective bounce monitoring systems, steps to identify and address unusual bounce trends, and actionable solutions for common bounce-related challenges. This video provides specific strategies to clean your lists and reduce bounce rates that could impact your account’s ability to send emails, helping you demonstrate improved sending practices with SES.
How this helps with email deliverability: High bounce rates often indicate that a sender is sending unsolicited email to their recipients.
Understanding and handling email complaints
Watch: Mastering Email Deliverability: Understanding and Handling Email Complaints
What you’ll learn: What email complaints are and why they matter, different types of complaints (spam reports, unsubscribe requests), how complaints directly impact your deliverability rates, the correlation between complaint rates and spam folder placement , strategies to keep complaint rates within ideal ranges, practical tips to proactively reduce email complaints, and best practices for content creation and opt-out options. This video helps you understand how to maintain a healthy sender reputation by implementing best practices that align with email service provider guidelines and minimize potential risks to the email system.
How this helps with email deliverability: Mailbox providers may reject emails received from senders based on the complaints they received from their recipients.
Take action today
Don’t let deliverability issues impact your business success. Each video in this series provides practical, actionable guidance that you can implement immediately. Whether you’re dealing with account suspensions issue or simply want to optimize your email performance, these videos will help you establish reliable email delivery that meets mailbox provider requirements.
Ready to get started? Begin with the video that addresses your most pressing challenge, then work through the complete series to learn more about all aspects of email deliverability with Amazon SES.
Have questions about implementing these strategies? The AWS Support team is here to help you optimize your email deliverability and resolve any challenges you may be facing.