Email program success metrics

Try to keep your hard bounce rate below 5%. The fewer hard bounces in your email program, the more likely ISPs will see your messages as legitimate and valuable. This rate should be considered a reasonable and attainable goal, but isn't a universal rule across all ISPs.

Never rent or buy email lists. These lists may contain large numbers of invalid addresses, which could cause your hard bounce rates to increase dramatically. Furthermore, these lists could contain spam traps—email addresses specifically used to catch illegitimate senders. If your messages land in a spam trap, your delivery rates and sender reputation could be irrevocably damaged.

Keep your list up to date. If you haven't emailed your recipients in a long time, try to validate your customers' statuses through some other means (such as website login activity or purchase history).

If you don't have a method of verifying your customers' statuses, consider sending a win-back email. A typical win-back email mentions that you haven't heard from the customer in a while, and encourages the customer to confirm that they still want to receive your email. After sending a win-back email, purge all of the recipients who did not respond from your lists.

If an email address hard bounces, immediately remove that address from your lists. Do not attempt to re-send messages to hard-bouncing addresses. Repeated hard bounces add up, and ultimately harm your reputation with the recipient's ISP.

Make sure that the address you use to receive bounce notifications is able to receive email. For more information about setting up bounce and complaint notifications, see Setting up event notifications for Amazon SES.

If your inbound email comes to you from an ISP, instead of through your own internal servers, an influx of bounce notifications can land in your spam folder or be dropped completely. Ideally, you should not use a hosted email address to receive bounces. If you must, however, then check the spam folder often, and don't mark the bounce messages as spam. In Amazon SES, you can specify the address that bounce notifications are sent to.

Usually, a bounce provides the address of the mailbox refusing delivery. However, if you need more granular data to map a recipient address to a particular email campaign, include an X-header with a value you can trace back to your internal tracking system. For more information, see Amazon SES header fields.

Try to keep your complaint rate below 0.1%. The fewer complaints in your email program, the more likely ISPs will see your messages as legitimate and valuable. This rate should be considered a reasonable and attainable goal, but isn't a universal rule across all ISPs.

If a customer complains about a marketing email, you should immediately stop sending that customer marketing emails. However, if your email program also includes other types of emails (such as notification or transactional emails), it may be acceptable to continue to send those types of messages to the recipient who issued the complaint.

As with hard bounces, if you have a list that you haven't sent email to in a while, ensure that your recipients understand why they're receiving your messages. We recommend that you send a welcome message reminding them of who you are and why you're contacting them.

Make sure that the address you use to receive complaint notifications is able to receive email. For more information about setting up bounce and complaint notifications, see Setting up event notifications for Amazon SES.

Make sure that your complaint notifications aren't being marked as spam by your ISP or mail system.

Complaint notifications usually contain the body of the email; this is different from bounce notifications, which only include the email headers. However, in complaint notifications, the email address of the individual who issued the complaint is removed. Use custom X-headers or special identifiers embedded in the email body so that you can identify the email address that issued the complaint. This technique makes it easier to identify addresses that complained so that you can remove them from your recipient lists.

Modern content filters are intelligent, continuously adapting and changing. They don't rely on a predefined set of rules. Third-party services such as ReturnPath or Litmus can help identify content in your email that may trigger content filters.

If your email contains links, check the URLs for those links against DNS-based Blackhole Lists (DNSBLs), such as those found at URIBL.com and SURBL.org.

Avoid using link shorteners. Malicious senders may use link shorteners to hide the actual destination of a link. When ISPs notice that link shortening services—even the most reputable ones—are being used for nefarious purposes, they may deny access to those services altogether. If your email contains a link to a link shortening service that has been added to a deny list, it won't reach your customers' inboxes, and the success of your email campaign suffers.

Test every link in your email to ensure that it points to the intended page.

Make sure your website includes Privacy Policy and Terms of Use documents, and that these documents are up to date. It's a good practice to link to these documents from each email you send. Providing links to these documents demonstrates that you have nothing to hide from your customers, which can help build a relationship of trust.

If you plan to send high-frequency content (such as "daily deals" messages), ensure that the content of your email is different with each deployment. When you send messages with high frequency, you must ensure that those messages are timely and relevant, rather than repetitive and annoying.