Self-hosted software for email marketing using Amazon SES

Amazon Simple Email Services (SES)

Amazon SES is a highly flexible and reliable cloud-based email platform provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS). It is designed to enable businesses and developers to send and receive emails on a large scale with ease. What sets Amazon SES apart is its emphasis on scalability, cost-effectiveness, and robust deliverability, making it a popular choice for organizations of all sizes seeking a reliable solution for their email marketing and communication needs.

For teams looking for self-hosted software for email marketing using Amazon SES, the key is to combine SES delivery with a dedicated campaign management platform.

What does Amazon SES offer for marketers?

Amazon SES offers a comprehensive suite of features that cater to various email-related needs, from transactional and promotional emails to bulk email campaigns. Key features include:

1. Email sending and receiving: Amazon SES supports both outbound and inbound email flows, allowing users to send campaigns while managing replies, bounces, and complaints.
2. Deliverability dashboard: this tool provides insights into email performance and deliverability, enabling users to monitor metrics like bounce rates, complaint rates, and email reputation scores.
3. Customizable sender identities: users can personalize their emails by verifying sender domains or addresses, ensuring recipients recognize their brand.
4. Advanced security features: Amazon SES integrates seamlessly with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), providing fine-grained control over who can send emails. It also supports authentication mechanisms like DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) and Sender Policy Framework (SPF).
5. Scalability: whether you're sending a few dozen emails or millions, Amazon SES can scale to meet your needs.
6. Pay-as-You-Go pricing: instead of monthly subscriptions, Amazon SES charges based on usage, making it an affordable choice for businesses of all sizes.

Why Use Amazon SES for Email Marketing?

1. Cost-Effectiveness: Amazon SES's pricing model makes it budget-friendly for small and large businesses alike. You only pay for the emails you send with no hidden charges. See Amazon SES pricing.
2. Scalability: Whether you’re sending a transactional receipt or a bulk marketing email to thousands, Amazon SES can handle it effortlessly. For starters, Amazon SES provides a scalable infrastructure capable of handling large volumes of email. This scalability ensures that your email campaigns can grow alongside your business, without the need for significant technical adjustments.
3. High deliverability: The platform’s reputation as an email service provider is backed by Amazon’s infrastructure, ensuring consistent email delivery. Amazon SES utilizes built-in algorithms to optimize email deliverability by avoiding spam filters and blacklists. This ensures your emails reach the intended inboxes.
4. Ease of use: The service integrates with various development tools and frameworks, offering APIs and SDKs for seamless implementation.

How does nuevoMailer work with Amazon SES for email marketing?

Amazon SES is versatile and can be utilized in various scenarios with nuevoMailer, including:

• Bulk email marketing campaigns for sending your newsletters and promote your products, services and ideas to your subscribers.
• Automated emails like autoresponders, drip campaigns, welcome sequences, or periodic newsletters.
• Transactional emails triggered with the nuevoMailer API.
• Practically any email that can be sent from nuevoMailer.

How can you connect Amazon SES to nuevoMailer?

1. Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)
2. Application Programming Interface (API)

In case of SMTP you must create your SMTP credentials in your Amazon SES dashboard and then add an SMTP server in nuevoMailer. Then you create a Sender profile, select SMTP as Sending method and the SMTP server you just created.

For the API you will need your Amazon access key id, Amazon secret access key and Amazon region. With these you create a Sender profile that uses Amazon SES API as Sending method.

How do you process bounces, complaints, and deliveries?

This is actually the most important step of the integration. Amazon SES can send back to nuevoMailer notifications when an email is delivered, bounces or a subscriber complains.
For this purpose you must configure Amazon SNS. You will find detailed, step-by-step instructions in the User's guide.

Keep it clean

Avoid using purchased mailing lists with Amazon SES that may result in a high bounce rate. Your bounce rate should remain below 2%. If your bounce rate exceeds 5% your account will be under review. If your bounce rate exceeds 10% your account may be temporarily disabled.

Therefore it is important to configure Amazon SNS so you know which email accounts are problematic and activate the Automatic suppression settings in nuevoMailer to ensure that your lists remain clean. How?

Technical considerations

Amazon SES has a daily quota on the number of emails you can send and in addition a Maximum send rate (defined as emails/second).
In nuevoMailer whether you use the SMTP or the API method you can adjust these settings and thus be fully compliant with these requirements.

If you are in a shared hosting environment you should ask your hosting company whether you are allowed to use a 3rd party mail delivery service.

DKIM: in the Identities section of your Amazon SES dashboard you are provided with DNS records that you should add in your hosting control panel DNS. This is an important step in order to ensure that your emails are properly authenticated.

An SPF record is not necessary since Amazon SES automatically uses a subdomain of amazonses.com as the default MAIL FROM domain (Source).

Should I use the Virtual Deliverability Manager?

This is entirely optional and it involves an additional cost (very low though). In your nuevoMailer panel you can see all key metrics related to opens, clicks, bounces and more. You can enable the Virtual Deliverability Manager in your Amazon SES dashboard, see what it offers and you can always disable it if you are not interested in these additional reports. Actually, the most interesting part is the breakdown by ISP.

What are the benefits of self-hosted email marketing software with Amazon SES?

This combination blends the robust infrastructure of Amazon SES with the user-friendly and feature-rich capabilities of nuevoMailer, delivering a comprehensive email marketing solution that maximizes the impact of your email marketing campaigns.

You will enjoy enhanced deliverability, cost savings and improved campaign management.

Once integration and feedback handling are in place, the next question is what business outcomes this setup improves.

How does this setup improve deliverability and performance?

Deliverability is a critical factor in any email marketing strategy, as it determines whether your emails reach your audience's inboxes or are flagged as spam. When you integrate Amazon SES with nuevoMailer you will improve your campaigns' performance.

1. Reliable infrastructure: Amazon SES is backed by AWS’s globally distributed cloud infrastructure, known for its stability and reliability.
2. Improved reputation management: Amazon SES provides tools to monitor and maintain your email-sending reputation, such as complaint tracking and bounce management. Combined with nuevoMailer’s advanced list management features you maintain clean and healthy mailing lists, minimizing the risk of having your emails marked as spam.
3. Advanced authentication: features like DKIM and SPF offered by Amazon SES increase email authenticity and improve trust with email providers, further enhancing deliverability.
4. Optimized campaigns: nuevoMailer enables you to personalize email content and optimize campaigns for engagement, complementing Amazon SES’s strong deliverability to ensure your messages are not just delivered but also opened and read.

How does this setup improve cost savings and scalability?

This hybrid approach which involves choosing your own hosting with a specialized bulk email delivery platform is the most cost-effective solution for email marketing.

1. Pay-as-You-Go pricing: with Amazon SES’s pay-per-use pricing model, you only pay for the emails you send, eliminating monthly recurring costs. This flexibility is ideal for businesses and organizations of all sizes.
2. Low hosting costs: as a self-hosted solution, nuevoMailer avoids the recurring fees associated with SaaS platforms, allowing your business to maintain full control over their email marketing setup.
3. Scalable for growth: whether you’re sending a handful of transactional emails or managing large-scale email campaigns, Amazon SES seamlessly scales with your needs. nuevoMailer complements this by providing the tools needed to manage your mailing lists and newsletters and execute email campaigns efficiently as your subscriber list grows.
4. Resource optimization: by combining these tools, you can reduce the time and resources spent for managing email campaigns. Each party specializes at what it does best. nuevoMailer for lists and campaigns management and Amazon SES for email delivery.

How does this setup improve campaign management and analytics?

One of the most significant advantages of combining Amazon SES and nuevoMailer is the wealth of insights and control it provides. Together, they enable data-driven decision-making and more effective email campaigns:

1. Centralized campaign management: nuevoMailer acts as a hub for creating, managing, and tracking email campaigns. Its intuitive interface enables you to design your newsletters, manage your mailing lists, and schedule your email campaigns effortlessly.
2. Detailed analytics: nuevoMailer’s robust reporting tools provide insights into metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and subscriber engagement. When integrated with Amazon SES, you gain additional insights into deliverability metrics like bounces and complaints.
3. Enhanced personalization: using nuevoMailer’s segmentation capabilities, you can create targeted campaigns tailored to specific audience segments. Amazon SES ensures these personalized messages are delivered promptly and reliably.
4. Automation and workflows: nuevoMailer’s automation features, such as drip campaigns and autoresponders, allow you to nurture leads and maintain consistent communication. When combined with Amazon SES’s reliable delivery system, this ensures seamless execution of automated workflows.

Why should Amazon SES senders choose nuevoMailer?

By leveraging the scalability, cost-effectiveness, and high deliverability of Amazon SES, paired with the robust campaign management and segmentation features of nuevoMailer, you have an email marketing solution that meets the needs of modern businesses.

The enhanced deliverability and performance provided by Amazon SES, combined with the intuitive interface and analytics of nuevoMailer, make this combination an invaluable asset for marketers aiming to boost conversions and build stronger customer relationships.

FAQ

What is the best self-hosted software for email marketing using Amazon SES?

nuevoMailer is a self-hosted software for email marketing that integrates with Amazon SES (SMTP or API) both for sending and receiving feedback with Amazon SNS.

Can nuevoMailer send bulk emails through Amazon SES?

Yes. nuevoMailer supports high-volume sending through Amazon SES and helps you manage throughput according to your SES quota and rate limits.

Should I use SMTP or API to connect Amazon SES?

Both work fine and performance is practically the same. Reporting at nuevoMailer level is identical. With the API, nuevoMailer will also show you another report (directly derived from SES) that includes Delivery attempts, Bounces, Complaints, Rejects, your recent sending volume, quotas, and all identities under your SES account.

With the API you can also define and use tenants within your SES account. Each tenant maintains its own email identities, configuration sets, templates, and reputation metrics, ensuring complete isolation of email operations across customers or business units.

How are bounces and complaints managed?

Configure Amazon SNS notifications so nuevoMailer can automatically record delivery outcomes, suppress bad addresses, and protect sender reputation.
Check our User's guide for detailed, step-by-step instructions.

Do I need DKIM and SPF for Amazon SES campaigns?

DKIM should be enabled for sender authentication. SPF is generally covered by Amazon SES default MAIL FROM behavior unless you use a custom MAIL FROM domain.

Who should choose this Amazon SES + nuevoMailer setup?

Choose it if you want a self-hosted email marketing stack for Amazon SES, lower recurring costs, and full control over your platform and data.