AWS Messaging & Targeting Blog

Tag: best practices

DKIM Troubleshooting Series: Deliverability Considerations

Hello and welcome to the last entry in the Amazon SES DKIM troubleshooting blog series. So far, we have seen various technical problems that appeared between us and properly signed emails, and we also saw how DKIM helps protect our domain from various impersonators. We will now see whether DKIM can also improve our deliverability […]

Never send to old addresses, but what if you have to?

The best practice is to only send mail to people who have specifically asked for your mail, and who have recently interacted with your site.  “Interacted” can mean different things to different people, but generally it means they have logged in to your website, they have recently done business with you, or they have opened or […]

What is DMARC and should you use it?

This past year, the email industry launched a new standard to help senders protect their mail from being spoofed by phishing attempts.  Thus, DMARC was born.  It stands for “Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance.”  It’s a mouthful, but the impact of DMARC is significant.  LinkedIn has a good article describing what exactly DMARC brings […]

Email Definitions: Complaint Rate

Now that we’ve talked about complaints and feedback loops, we are ready to discuss complaint rates. As a reminder, a complaint occurs when an email recipient marks an email message as spam by clicking “This is spam” or “send to spam folder” in their web email client. The Internet Service Provider (ISP) records this as […]

Exercise Caution With Refer-a-Friend Links

So you’ve got your website up and running, and have a great set of customers actively engaging with your content.  Everything is running smoothly, but now you want to try some ideas on how to increase adoption or get some new folks to come to your site.  You might have even seen some other sites […]

Email Definitions: Feedback Loops

What goes around… Comes around! Does this proverb apply to your email-sending program? Probably not as much as you’d like. Ideally, you’d have a direct window into each interaction a recipient has with your message:  Did they actually open it? If so, did they scroll through it? Did they forward, delete, print, or file it? […]

On Buying Lists

Simon Says Don’t Buy a List* As you email market to your customers, there can be tremendous pressures from business owners or even self-inflicted pressure to increase the size of the channel for your email.  Building up your email list through traditional marketing routes such as:  banner ads, word-of-mouth, and search hits can feel slow […]

What if you get an SES probation notice for bounces?

So you’re sending lots of email; everything is looking great.  At least, until you get a probation notice in your inbox.  How could this be?  Why did it happen?  What are your next steps? First of all, take a deep breath.  There is generally a grace period for addressing issues you might be having with […]

What’s an inactive customer?

You are an email sender.  You’re most likely sending to real people.  When should you call it quits and stop mailing a person?  That’s an easy question to answer if your recipient requests to be unsubscribed.  You should remove those email addresses immediately.  If your recipient complains and you receive that complaint via an Amazon […]