- Related: Part 2 of Amazon SES for Bulk E-Mail Distribution
If you’re like me, you likely receive a lot of bulk e mails every day. I’m not talking about spam. I mean things like advertisements from companies I do business with, e mail newsletters, and other such things. Many companies use bulk email to engage customers. E-mail has been a reliable means of communication for decades. Sending bulk mail to customers seems simple. We all use distribution lists to communicate with co-workers. It can be difficult to send bulk e-mails. A number of years ago, I had an IT-related website. Users could subscribe to the list to receive the latest tech information via e-mail. The site quickly grew to include tens of thousands of subscribers. It was difficult to send e-mails out to all of these subscribers. It was difficult to send bulk e-mails because the IT industry was actively involved in an effort to eradicate spam. Microsoft made changes to the software I was using to make it impossible to send bulk email. I was able to work around the problem by using an older version. My ISP began to crack down on bulk messaging and threatened me with disconnection if I didn’t stop sending bulk messages. Although I wouldn’t consider do-it-yourself bulk message sending impossible, it could be more trouble than it’s worth. Amazon Web Services (AWS), which is also known as Amazon Simple Email Service, has a solution. Before I explain how to set Amazon SES up, I want to point out that although marketing e-mail appears to be its primary purpose, it is not the only one. It can also be used to send various types of notifications. For example, right now I am having my vehicle repainted. The body shop sends me automated notifications via e-mail to keep me informed about how the job is progressing. Although I don’t know the software used by the body shop, this type of thing can be done with Amazon SES. Log in to your AWS console, then go to the SES dashboard. Figure 1. [Click on the image to see a larger view.] Figure 1: This is Amazon SES dashboard. The dashboard has three main functions, as you can see from the above figure: Monitor Email Sending, Manage Identities, and Configure email Receiving. If you’re curious about the last one, SES can configure to receive e mail and place it in an Amazon Simple Storage Service S3 bucket. This functionality can be used to collect logs and alerts from monitoring software. To send bulk e mail, the first step is to verify the addresses you intend to use. AWS allows you to verify that you own the email address. If, for example, I wanted to send bulk e-mail that had a From or Return Path e-mail address of [email protected], then I would have to verify that e-mail address. In the example e mail address, you’ll notice that I used both capital and lowercase letters. AWS’ verification process is case sensitive. Therefore, verifying [email protected] would not entitle me to send mail from [email protected] AWS would consider it a different address and I would have to verify it separately. It is very easy to verify an e-mail account. Click on the Manage Identities link from the SES dashboard. Once the Identity Management screen opens, select the Email Addresses option in the console tree and then click the Verify a New Email Address button as shown in Figure 2. [Click on the image to see a larger view.