Keep your AWS account in good standing
On your own Amazon SES, Amazon watches your bounce and complaint rates. Here's how to keep them low, and what to do if Amazon pauses your sending.
When you send through your own Amazon SES, Amazon watches how many of your emails bounce (can’t be delivered) and how many get marked as spam. Keep both low and your account stays healthy. If either stays too high, Amazon can put your account under review and then pause its sending.
What Amazon watches
Amazon’s published levels are a 5% bounce rate and a 0.1% complaint rate: one bounce in every 20 emails, or one complaint in every 1,000. These are Amazon’s rules for your AWS account, on top of EmailFig’s own, and Amazon can change them.
- In AWS, your SES account page in us-east-1 shows the rates Amazon is judging you on, and whether your account is healthy, under review or paused.
- In EmailFig, the Sending health card on your dashboard shows your Hard bounce rate and Complaint rate over the last 30 days, and warns you at the same levels. Each campaign report has its own rates too. These won’t match Amazon’s exactly, because Amazon counts everything your SES account sends. See Read your dashboard.
Keeping your rates low
- Only email people who asked to hear from you. See Why you shouldn’t send to purchased lists.
- Use double opt-in on public signup forms.
- Warm up a new domain, and clean out inactive contacts regularly.
- Watch the first send to a new list, and pause it if bounces climb.
If people are marking your email as spam, see Why are my emails going to spam?
EmailFig helps too: an address that hard bounces is marked Cleaned and never mailed again from your account, and anyone who reports your email as spam is unsubscribed straight away.
If Amazon pauses your account
EmailFig pauses your sending too. Campaigns that were sending and live automations are paused, each showing why, and new sends are refused. Settings → AWS shows AWS has paused sending on your SES account. Open your SES console to see why. We can’t lift it for you. and we email you, with the subject Action needed: your AWS connection is broken. Your contacts, templates and reports are all safe.
Amazon usually pauses an account for high bounce or complaint rates, for sending to addresses you didn’t collect yourself, or for a billing problem. Getting the pause lifted is between you and Amazon.
- Open your SES account page in the AWS console (us-east-1) and read the status and figures there.
- Find Amazon’s notice in the inbox for your AWS account’s email address, or in your AWS support cases.
- Work out which send caused it. Each campaign report shows its bounce and complaint rates. See Read a campaign report.
- Remove the contacts behind it. If it traces back to one import, that list is the problem.
- Reply to Amazon with what caused it and what you’ve changed. Specific fixes go down better than promises.
When Amazon lifts the pause, EmailFig notices within a few hours. To check straight away, go to Settings → AWS and click Check again. Then open each paused campaign and automation and click Resume.
If Settings → AWS looks fine but you still can’t send, your EmailFig account itself may be on hold. See My account was suspended.