A Simple Introduction to Amazon AWS Part Three - Simple Email Service (SES)

Sorry for the long time between posts. We've been really busy here - which is good. But as you know, when things get busy, all the "wanna-do's" (our blog) get pushed aside by the "have-to do's".

This is the third and final part of our series on Amazon AWS services. This post is on Amazon's "Simple Email Service" or SES.

Personally, I've been involved with large scale email marketing for 10 years now. I've set up and managed email servers for clients, and I've set up and run bulk email programs for email newsletters and marketing efforts. It's actually pretty difficult to do properly.

Let's use setting up and sending an email newsletter as our example that will lead in to why we recommend the Amazon SES service.

Let's say you're the owner or president or key manager of a business and you want to use email newsletters as a way of staying in front of your customers. Great idea, but where do you start?

If you're mailing list is under 300 people, you could just "bcc" (blind copy) your whole list and send right from within your email program (assuming you just want a very basic. plain layout). For very small lists, it's not a bad method. Most programs allow up to 300 bcc's, and you don't need any special programs, servers or help. With such a small list, you can quickly remove any bounced or removal requests you get.