Review the Email Best Practices section before following these steps to set up an email channel.

1. Select Add Sender.
2. In the new window, select the Sender Type drop-down menu.
3. Select Email.

4. Fill out the email address and alias fields.
5. Select Save.

The Enabled channels table updates to include the newly added email. However, the email channel goes into a pending state waiting to be verified by the AWS Email Verification system. You select the eye icon of the recently added email channel to view the Pending status in the Sender Details window.

Amazon Web Services – Email Address Verification verifies the email channel before it becomes available. You receive an email from AWS at the address you added, containing a URL. The URL has a validity period of 24 hours.

Clicking the URL displays a confirmation message. The email then becomes available as a platform channel.

To confirm the email was added, you select the eye icon and verify the status changed to Success.

If you do not click the URL within 24 hours, the link expires and the email channel is not validated. The Sender Details screen shows a Failed status.

Email best practices

Several factors can lead to your email program's success or failure. Email delivery knowledge and best practices increase the chances of reaching your customers' inboxes. Even when you have customers' interests in mind, you may still encounter situations that impact your messages.

The following recommendations help your email communications reach your intended audience.

Authentication

1. Authenticate your domain with SPF. Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is an email validation standard that prevents email spoofing. Domain owners use SPF to tell email providers which servers can send emails from their domains.
2. Sign your outbound mail with DKIM. DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) is an email security standard that verifies the domain owner authorized each outbound email. It uses public-key cryptography to sign an email with a private key. Recipient servers use a public key from the domain's DNS to verify the email was not modified in transit.

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ADDING AN EMAIL SENDER

When adding an email sender to your account, you must contact your account manager or support team to get the TXT Records to authenticate your domain with SPF and DNS Records to sign outbound mail with DKIM.

The procedures for updating DNS records vary depending on which DNS or web hosting provider you use.

3. Test your authentication settings. Sending a test email to a Gmail or Hotmail account and inspecting the original message verifies your domain configuration. For Gmail, the following steps apply.

   After sending from your domain to your Gmail account, you open the email and check whether it arrived from your domain. You check the Inbox and Spam folders. If you find the email sent from your domain, your email is authenticating.

   Gmail does not accept emails that do not authenticate. You confirm this by inspecting the details of the email message.

   To do this, you open the received email message. You select the kebab menu (three vertical dots) to the far right of the From field. Several options appear; you select Show Original.

The resulting screen shows a detailed view of the message, including the authentication performed and the domain and IP address used. A sample screenshot appears below.

In the figure above, your domain refers to the domain used for email messages on the platform. This outcome confirms correct authentication.

If the test email does not arrive, the domain is not being authenticated or signed.

Domain and "From" address considerations

• Choose the addresses you send emails from with care. The "From" address is one of the first pieces of information your recipients see and can leave a lasting first impression. Some ISPs also associate your reputation with your "From" address.
• Do not use a no-reply address, such as [email protected], as your "From" or "Reply-to" address. A no-reply@ address signals to recipients that you are not offering a way to contact you or interested in their feedback.
• You keep the WHOIS information for your domain accurate. An honest, up-to-date WHOIS record demonstrates transparency and helps users quickly identify whether your domain is legitimate.

Maintain a Clean List

• You use a double opt-in strategy. When users sign up, you send a confirmation link and wait until they confirm their address before sending further emails. A double opt-in strategy helps reduce the number of hard bounces resulting from typographical errors.

  An organically grown list maintains a healthier subscription list.

• You perform minimal validation on addresses collected with a web-based form. For example, you ensure that the addresses you collect are well-formed (format: [email protected]). You also verify they refer to domains with valid MX records.

• You exercise caution when allowing user-defined input to pass unchecked. Forum registrations and form submissions present unique risks — the content is user-generated and spammers can inject their own. You send only emails with high-quality content.

• Do not send emails to standard aliases (such as postmaster@, abuse@, support@, or noc@). You send messages only to real people who want to receive them. Standard aliases are customarily reserved for email watchdogs.

  These aliases can be maliciously added to your list as a form of sabotage to damage your reputation.

• You periodically purge inactive users to keep your list and reputation with email service providers healthy.

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HARD BOUNCES

It's essential that you monitor the number of hard bounces in your email program, and that you remove hard-bouncing email addresses from your recipient lists. When email receivers detect a high rate of hard bounces, they assume that you don't know your recipients well. As a result, a high hard bounce rate can negatively impact the deliverability of your email messages.

Your account will be suspended from sending more emails when the Bounce Rate is 5% or higher.