What Is Amazon SES?

Welcome to the Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES) Developer Guide. Amazon SES is an outbound-only email-sending service that provides an easy, cost-effective way for you to send email. You can use Amazon SES to send marketing emails such as special offers, transactional emails such as order confirmations, and other types of correspondence such as newsletters. You only pay for what you use, so you can send as much or as little email as you like. For more service highlights and pricing information, go to the Amazon Simple Email Service Detail Page.

Where does Amazon SES fit in?

When you send an email, you are sending it through some type of outbound email server. That email server might be provided by your Internet service provider (ISP), your company's IT department, or you might have set it up yourself. The email server accepts your email content, formats it to comply with email standards, and then sends the email out over the Internet. The email may pass through other servers until it eventually reaches a receiver (an entity, such as an ISP, that receives the email on behalf of the recipient). The receiver then delivers the email to the recipient. The following diagram illustrates the basic email-sending process.

When you use Amazon SES, Amazon SES becomes your outbound email server. You can also keep your existing email server and configure it to send your outgoing emails through Amazon SES so that you don't have to change any settings in your email clients. The following diagram shows where Amazon SES fits in to the email-sending process.

A sender can generate the email content in different ways. A sender can create the email by using an email client application, or use a program that automatically generates emails, like an application that sends order confirmations in response to purchase transactions.

Why use Amazon SES?

When you use Amazon SES, you can eliminate the complexity and expense of building an in-house email solution or licensing, installing, and operating a third-party email service. Another important factor in any email-sending effort is deliverability—the percentage of your emails that arrive in your recipients' inboxes. ISPs use filters to detect email messages that appear to be spam (unsolicited, undesired emails) and prevent these messages from being delivered. Even if your email is legitimate, an ISP's spam filter could falsely identify your email as spam, and put it in the recipient's junk folder or block it entirely.
If you are not using Amazon SES, you need to take several steps to reduce the likelihood that your emails will be marked as spam. For example, you need to examine the content of your emails to make sure they don't contain material that is typically flagged as questionable. You need to build trust with ISPs so that the ISPs have high confidence that you are sending high-quality emails, and therefore are less likely to block emails coming from you. You need to ensure that you don't send too many emails too soon because sudden spikes in email-sending volume or rate may cause ISPs to block your emails. Amazon SES takes care of all of these tasks for you to maximize the deliverability of your emails.
Another aspect that you would need to manage yourself is to keep track of bounces (email delivery failures that occur, for example, if an email address does not exist) and complaints (emails that recipients mark as spam, for example, by clicking "Mark as spam" in their email client). To receive complaint feedback, you would need to set up feedback loops with individual ISPs. Amazon SES already has feedback loops set up with certain major ISPs, and automatically forwards the information to you. Amazon SES also forwards bounce notifications to you either by email or through Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) and provides you with real-time access to your delivery metrics—the number of emails you have sent and the number that have bounced or generated complaints—to help guide your email-sending strategy.

How do I send emails using Amazon SES?

There are several ways that you can send an email by using Amazon SES. You can use the Amazon SES console, the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) interface, or you can call the Amazon SES API.

• Amazon SES console—This method is the quickest way to set up your system and send a couple of test emails, but once you are ready to start your email campaign, you will use the console primarily to monitor your sending activity. For example, you can quickly view the number of emails that you have sent and the number of bounces and complaints that you have received.
• SMTP Interface—There are two ways to access Amazon SES through the SMTP interface. The first way, which requires no coding, is to configure any SMTP-enabled software to send email through Amazon SES. For example, you can configure your existing email client or software program to connect to the Amazon SES SMTP endpoint instead of your current outbound email server.
  The second way is to use an SMTP-compatible programming language such as Java and access the Amazon SES SMTP interface by using the language's built-in SMTP functions and data types.
• Amazon SES API—You can call the Amazon SES Query (HTTPS) interface directly, or you can use the AWS Command Line Interface, the AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell, or an AWS Software Development Kit (SDK). The AWS SDKs wrap the low-level functionality of the Amazon SES API with higher-level data types and function calls that take care of the details for you. The AWS SDKs provide not only Amazon SES operations, but also basic AWS functionality such as request authentication, request retries, and error handling. AWS SDKs and resources are available for Android, iOS, Java, .NET, Node.js, PHP, Python, and Ruby.

Amazon SES and other AWS services

Amazon SES integrates seamlessly with other AWS products. For example, you can:

• Add email capabilities to any application that runs on an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instance by using the AWS SDKs or the Amazon SES API. If you want to send email through Amazon SES from an Amazon EC2 instance, you can get started with Amazon SES for free.
• Use AWS Elastic Beanstalk to create an email-enabled application such as a program that uses Amazon SES to send a newsletter to customers.
• Set up Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) to notify you of your emails that bounced, produced a complaint, or were successfully delivered to the recipient's mail server.
• Use the AWS Management Console to set up Easy DKIM, which is a way to authenticate your emails. Although you can use Easy DKIM with any DNS provider, it is especially easy to set up when you manage your domain with Amazon Route 53.
• Control user access to your email sending by using AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM).

How do I start?

If you are a first-time user of Amazon SES, we recommend that you begin by reading the following sections:

• Amazon SES Quick Start—Shows you how to get set up and send a test email as quickly as possible.
• Getting Started with Amazon SES—Shows you how to send an email by using the Amazon SES console, the SMTP interface, and an AWS SDK. Examples are provided in C# and Java.
• Email Deliverability and Amazon SES—Explains email deliverability concepts that you should be familiar with when you use Amazon SES.
• Sending Email with Amazon SES—Shows you what happens when you send an email through Amazon SES.
• Email Format and Amazon SES—Reviews the format of emails and identifies the information that you need to provide to Amazon SES.

Then you can learn about Amazon SES in more detail by reading the sections listed in the following table:

Section	Description
Setting up Amazon SES	Shows you how to sign up for AWS, get your AWS access keys, download an AWS SDK, and verify email addresses or domains so that you can start sending emails with Amazon SES.
Using the Amazon SES SMTP Interface to Send Email	Shows you how to get your Amazon SES SMTP credentials, connect to the Amazon SES SMTP endpoint, and provides examples of how to configure email clients and software packages to send email through Amazon SES. Also explains how to configure your existing email server to send all outgoing emails through Amazon SES.
Using the Amazon SES API to Send Email	Shows you how to send formatted and raw emails by using the Amazon SES API. Explains how to use non-standard characters and send attachments by using the Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) standard when you send raw emails.
Regions and Amazon SES	Lists the Amazon SES SMTP and API endpoints for the AWS regions in which Amazon SES is available, and contains information you need to know when you use Amazon SES endpoints in multiple regions.
Authenticating Email in Amazon SES	Shows you how to use Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and DKIM with Amazon SES to show ISPs that you own the account you are sending from and your emails have not been modified in transit.
Monitoring Your Amazon SES Sending Activity	Shows you how to view your usage statistics (such as the number of deliveries, bounces, and complaints) and sending limits by using the Amazon SES console or by calling the Amazon SES API. Also shows you how to receive bounce and complaint notifications by email, and how to receive bounce, complaint, and delivery notifications by setting up Amazon SNS notifications.
Managing Your Amazon SES Sending Limits	Explains the two Amazon SES sending limits (sending quota and maximum send rate), how to increase them, and the errors you receive when you try to exceed them.
Improving Deliverability with Amazon SES	Provides tips about how to improve the percentage of emails that reach your recipients' inboxes. These include monitoring your sending activity and taking preventative measures to keep your bounce and complaint statistics low.
Controlling User Access to Amazon SES	Shows you how to use Amazon SES with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) to specify which Amazon SES API actions a user can perform on which Amazon SES resources.
Testing Amazon SES Email Sending	Explains how to use the Amazon SES mailbox simulator to simulate common email scenarios without affecting your sending statistics such as your bounce and complaint metrics. The scenarios you can test are successful delivery, bounce, complaint, out-of-the-office (OOTO), and address on the suppression list.
Limits in Amazon SES	Lists limits within Amazon SES.
Troubleshooting Amazon SES	Explains common causes of delivery problems and provides descriptions of common Amazon SES exceptions and SMTP response codes.

For more information about Amazon SES terms, see the AWS glossary.

A Beginner’s Guide to Starting an Email Newsletter & Building a Mailing List

Posted on Monday, June 30th, 2014

Written by Marcus Taylor

It may seem like every man and his dog now has a newsletter, but for good reason; email newsletters are one of the most effective digital marketing channels. If you’re not convinced, consider this…

Why would you want to run a newsletter?

The reason for setting up a newsletter is simple; it’s a scalable and effective method of communicating with your audience. It’s a powerful tool for spreading your message, selling your products, and staying on the tip of your audience’s tongue.
When you post a message on your Facebook page, you’re lucky if 5% of your audience sees it. When you tweet, you’re lucky if 1% of your followers are online. However, with email it’s not unusual to receive a 30-50% open rate if you know what you’re doing. On top of that, emails drive business…
Last year, 44% of email recipients made at least one purchase last year based on a promotional email. For every $1 spent on email marketing, $44.25 is the average return on email marketing investment. It’s no surprise, then, that email marketing budgets have been increasing by 10% year on year.
While these stats may inspire hope and confidence, there is a dark side to email marketing that we’d be naive not to acknowledge.
Over 84% of emails are marked as spam, which means that consumers are increasingly weary over how they filter their emails and what they sign up to. With services like Unroll.me, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to get inbox real estate, unless you truly earn it.
In this post I want to walk through how to set up a newsletter in a way that ensures that you not only dodge the spam folder, but that offers incredible value to your customers and generates a huge return on investment for your project or business.
As I wanted to make this post a really comprehensive guide for anyone starting a newsletter, i’ve broken it up into three parts, which you can skip between if you like (click the links below to skip to the most relevant part):

• How to start your email newsletter
• How to collect email addresses and build your mailing list
• How to create & send your first newsletter

How to start your email newsletter

When starting a newsletter, we need to go through a few simple steps, which i’ve illustrated in the following graphic. This whole process should take less than 15 minutes when using this guide.

While these steps are all quite intuitive, i’ve talked through each one individually below in-case you’re not sure about anything.

Step 1. Sign up for an email marketing service

To begin creating a newsletter, we need a piece of software that will manage our email list, allow us to build newsletters, and provide us with the insights to see what is or isn’t working.
I recommend using GetResponse.
Over the past six years or so, I’ve played around with dozens of email marketing services, from Aweber to Infusionsoft and GetResponse. Out of all them, GetResponse is my overall favourite. Why?
It’s extremely affordable (starting at $15/month), while incredibly powerful and easy to use. I also find that GetResponse have some of the best newsletter template designs around. Aweber is another good call, but I find their user interface a bit outdated and clunky (plus, their pricing starts at $19/month – not a big deal, but considering they’re not quite as good as GetResponse IMO this pushes the needle in favour of GetResponse even more).
If you want to weigh up the different options in more detail, i’ve written a comprehensive comparison of email marketing software providers here, but to cut a long story short – GetResponse are probably your best option unless you need a complex behaviour-triggered email marketing service.

Step 2. Add your contacts

If you’re using GetResponse, the first step is to add any contacts you already have to your default list. Don’t worry if you don’t have anyone to add yet (you can just skip this step), but if you have a database of customers or readers, this is where you can add them.
From the main dashboard, click the big button that says ‘add contacts’ and you’ll be forwarded to a page that looks like this. You can then either add your existing contacts by importing them from a CSV file, or copying and pasting their email addresses into the import box.
This will automatically start building your default list.

Step 3. Create a web form

The next step is to begin building our web form, which will likely be our main method of collecting new mailing list subscribers.
To do this, click the large red button that says ‘create web form’ and choose a template to begin editing from the row of default web forms.
You can then customise the web form so that it fits your website’s colour scheme and layout. Here you can also add images and extra text. Also, if you know a bit of HTML and CSS, you can hack around with the code to change how the form is displayed. However, this is not entirely necessary, as their drag and drop editor is pretty decent.
Once you’re happy with your web form, it’s time to create your thankyou page. This is the page that your subscribers will see once they’ve entered your email in your web form and confirmed their email address.

Step 4. Set your thankyou page (optional)

While GetResponse does have a default thankyou page that’s absolutely fine to use, I would recommend creating your own customised thankyou page, either now or in the future.
Why? Well, this is a great opportunity to promote an offer to your customers or direct them to something that may be of interest on your website. It also looks a little bit unprofessional leaving it as a blank page with the standard GetResponse branding.
To create your own customised thankyou page, you’ll need to create a page on your website with the information that you want.

Step 5. Install your web form on your website

Once you’re happy with the way your web form and thankyou page looks, it’s time to install your web form on your website.
The easiest way to do this is to just copy and paste the HTML embed code that’s provided under the ‘publish’ tab into where you want your web form to appear on your website. However, if you’re not comfortable doing this, you can always click the option ‘my web designer will install this form’, which will allow you to email a link to your code to your web designer.
Once this is done you should be able to test your web form live on your website to make sure that it’s working as it should.
And that’s all there is to it. You have the foundations of a newsletter all up and running. All that’s left to do is start building your list and begin building your newsletters.

Collecting email addresses and building your list

When it comes to creating a newsletter, getting set up is the easy bit. The real challenge is building up your mailing list of engaged recipients. So, how can we do this in a way that ensures we get the right people on our mailing list?
The first thing to realise is that people don’t sign up to mailing lists for no reason. In fact, most people actively do the opposite, which means we need to think about the following question from your audience’s perspective:
What’s in it for me?
We all visit hundreds of websites every day, and there are very few sites that don’t want us to hand over our personal information, so how can you stand out from the crowd?
By offering more value than everyone else.
That may mean writing incredible content so that people want to be updated as soon as you write a new post. It may mean having to create something like an eBook or free guide to give away in return for their email address.
There are hundreds of great blog posts written about building your mailing list, so I won’t cover this in too much depth here, but I will share a few good examples from mailing lists that i’ve subscribed to.

#1 Using ‘Hello Bar’ to drive subscribers

Hellobar is a powerful free widget that appears at the top of every page on your website once installed. You can customise the message and call to action, as well as A/B testing different messages to optimise your conversion rate.
For driving mailing list subscribers this is a great opportunity to attract attention with an incentive such as a free eBook or entry to win a prize in return for an email address.

#2 Using Pop-ups effectively

Pop ups are a controversial tactic for driving subscribers, as many people find them extremely annoying. Despite this, many marketers have found that they’re extremely effective at driving newsletter subscriptions.
If you plan to go down this route, I’d recommend using something like BounceExchange, which only triggers a pop up when a user is about to leave your website.

#3 Adding email captures at the end of your blog posts

One of the most common methods of building a mailing list is through blogging. We’ve written about this in more depth here, but here’s a great example of it being used in action on the KISSmetrics blog.

At the end of every post on KISSmetrics’ blog, they link to a white paper or free eBook, in which a reader must offer their email address for to download.

Creating your first newsletter

To begin building our first newsletter we’ll need to go back into GetResponse and click the green ‘create a newsletter’ button on the dashboard. That should bring you to a page that looks something like this:

From here, click on the left ‘new email creator’ button and then follow through the step-by-step editor. One of the first things you’ll need to do is decide on your subject.

How to write a subject line than stands out

Many of your recipients will receive tens or perhaps even hundreds of emails every day. Your subject line has to catch their attention and convince them that reading your email will be valuable to them. Here are a few pointers to consider:

• Keep it short – while most email clients display up to 60 characters in the subject line, many mobile browsers only show 25-30 characters. Make sure to convey what your email’s about in the first 30 characters.
• Don’t use filler words – with so few characters available, don’t waste them on words like ‘hi’, ‘hello’, or ‘thanks’.
• Be clear about the contents of the email – before trying to maximise interest and appeal, your subject line must be specific about the contents of your email. Remember, a high open rate is pointless if it annoys recipients and leads to a low engagement rate.
• Use urgency and scarcity – where relevant, it pays to use urgency and scarcity in your subject lines. For example, you might start the subject line with [Urgent] or ’3 Days Remaining’. This conveys that they must not procrastinate on opening your email.
• Personalise it – this is the oldest trick in the book with email marketing. A subject line that includes the recipient’s name is virtually guaranteed to have a higher open rate than one that doesn’t.
• A/B Test – One of the benefits of using GetResponse is that you can split test your subject lines i.e. send 25% of your mailing list a version of your newsletter with one subject line and 25% a version with another subject line. You can then compare which subject line is more effective and send the remaining 50% of your list the best performing version.

When you’ve written a subject line that you’re happy with, you can then click next and begin choosing your newsletter template. After choosing one that you like the look of you’ll end up in the newsletter designer window, which looks something like this.

Using the drag and drop editor, you should be able to easily customise your newsletter so that it fits with the branding and design of your business. Once you’ve designed your first newsletter and have written what you want to say, it’s time to send it out to your list!
And that’s all there is to it! From here, you should find time every month or perhaps every two weeks to create a newsletter to send out to your followers. Each time, you will hopefully have more subscribers to send your newsletter out to.

In summary

Starting a newsletter and building up your mailing list can be incredibly rewarding when done right, so stick with it. As with many great things, it will take time.
However, to maximise your chances of seeing great results, constantly experiment with what works and keep improving all aspects of your email marketing.
I hope the recommendations in this post have been useful. I’m aware that we’ve tried to cover a huge range of things in one post, so don’t be discouraged if it seems overwhelming! At the end of the day, it all comes down to building your list and writing a newsletter that your audience enjoys.
If you have any questions about starting an email newsletter, building a mailing list, or anything email marketing related, feel free to post them in the comments below and i’ll be sure to respond.

If you liked this post, you may also like:

Aweber vs. GetResponse Review: Which is Best for Email Marketing? Email Marketing Software / Services – Which One is the Best? Has Content & Social Killed Link Building? A Guide to Digital Marketing for Music Tech Startups

Written by Marcus Taylor

Marcus Taylor is an award-winning entrepreneur, and founder of Venture Harbour. Marcus also built the World's first scientifically valid 'comfort zone calculator', which he has spoken about at TEDx.

Marcus speaks about marketing and entrepreneurship at conferences internationally, and contributes to Econsultancy, Moz, Forbes, and Huffington Post.