How do I track bounces, opens, or clicks in emails that I send from Amazon SES?

Short description

To track email metrics in Amazon SES such as send volume, bounces, complaints, opens, and clicks, use Virtual Deliverability Manager. You must open the Virtual Deliverability Manager feature to view these statistics.

If you want to track activity outside of the console, then use Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) to receive notifications. Amazon SNS can send you alerts when a recipient opens your email, clicks a link in your email, and when your email bounces.

Resolution

Use Virtual Deliverability Manager to monitor email activity

Virtual Deliverability Manager tracks the status and user engagement for the emails that you send from Amazon SES. To set up and use this feature, see Getting started with Virtual Deliverability Manager.

You can to view detailed email metrics of your notified events in the Virtual Deliverability Manager dashboard. However, you don't receive updates or notifications outside of the dashboard. If you want to receive a notification for certain email events, then take the following actions to configure Amazon SNS notifications.

Use Event Destinations to track your sent emails

Each event destination that you set up belongs to one configuration set. When you set up an event destination with Amazon SES, choose the AWS service destination and specify the parameters for that destination. For more information about how to set up event destinations, see Add an event destination.

Use one of the following AWS services for your event destination:

• Amazon CloudWatch
• Amazon Data Firehose
• Amazon EventBridge
• Amazon Pinpoint
• Amazon SNS

Choose a destination based on how you want to receive the level of detail about the event information. For example, choose CloudWatch as the destination to get event counts and to set alarms. Or, choose Amazon SNS as the destination to get detailed event logs.

For more information about how to monitor sending activity in Amazon SES, see Monitoring your Amazon SES sending activity.

Use Amazon SNS to receive notifications for email activity

Prerequisite: Verify your domain with Amazon SES.

To configure Amazon SNS to notify you of email opens, link clicks, and bounces, complete the following steps.

Note: If you send an email to multiple recipients, then the following configuration doesn't show the recipients who open the email.

Create an SNS topic

To create an Amazon SNS topic, complete the following steps:

1. Open the Amazon SNS console.
2. Choose Topics.
3. On the Topics page, choose Create topic.
4. In the Details section, for Type, choose Standard.
5. For Topic name, enter a name.
   (Optional) For Display name, enter a topic display name.
6. Choose Create topic.
7. From the Topic details of the topic, choose Create subscription.
8. For Protocol, choose Email-JSON.
9. For Endpoint, enter the email address where you want to receive notifications.
10. Choose Create subscription.
11. From the email address, open the "AWS Notification - Subscription Confirmation" email from Amazon SNS.
12. Open the SubscribeURL URL to confirm your subscription.

Configure Amazon SES to send information about email clicks, opens, and bounces to the SNS topic

To configure Amazon SES to send information to the SNS topic, complete the following steps:

1. Open the Amazon SES console.
2. Choose your AWS Region.
3. In the navigation pane, under Configuration, choose Configuration Sets.
4. Choose Create Set.
5. For Configuration Set Name, enter a name.
6. Choose Create Set.
7. Choose the Event Destinations tab, and then choose Add Destination.
8. For Event types, choose Hard Bounces, Opens and Clicks, and then choose Next.
9. For Destination type, choose Amazon SNS.
10. For Name, enter a name for the SNS destination.
11. For SNS Topic, choose the Amazon SNS topic, and then choose Next.
12. Choose Add Destination.

Send a test email to verify the notifications for email opens, clicks, and bounces

Amazon SES has a mailbox simulator that you can use to test email opens, clicks, and bounces. To use the mailbox simulator for tests, complete the following steps:

1. Open the Amazon SES console.
2. In the navigation pane, under Configuration, choose Verified Identities.
3. Select one of your verified domains.
4. Choose Send Test Email.
5. For Message details, choose the email format Raw.
6. For From-address, enter an email address with your verified domain.
7. For Scenario, choose Custom to verify opens and clicks or Bounce to verify bounces.
8. Enter an email address to use as a test recipient.
   Note: For Custom, if you're in the Amazon SES sandbox, then you must use a verified email address in the Custom recipient field.
9. For Message, enter text that's similar to the following examples.
   Example custom scenario:

   X-SES-CONFIGURATION-SET: myConfigset  
   From: test-verified-domain@example.com  
   To: test-recipient@example.com  
   Subject: Test email   
   Content-Type: multipart/alternative;  
       boundary="----=_boundary"  
      
   ------=_boundary  
   Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8  
   Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit  
      
   This is a test email.  
      
   <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/">Amazon Web Services</a>  
      
   ------=_boundary--

   Example bounce scenario:

   X-SES-CONFIGURATION-SET: myConfigset  
   From: test-verified-domain@example.com  
   To: bounce@simulator.amazonses.com  
   Subject: Test email  
   Content-Type: multipart/alternative;  
       boundary="----=_boundary"  
      
   ------=_boundary  
   Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8  
   Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit  
      
   This is a test email.  
      
   <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/">Amazon Web Services</a>  
      
   ------=_boundary--

   Note: Replace myConfigset with the name of your configuration set.
10. Choose Send Test Email.
11. From your test recipient email address, open the test email, and then click the link.

Specify the configuration set in the headers of your email

To apply your configuration set to your email, pass the configuration set in your email headers.

Check your SNS notifications and Virtual Deliverability Manager metrics

To check your SNS notifications and Virtual Deliverability Manager metrics, complete the following steps:

1. From the inbox of the email address that you used for your Amazon SNS topic subscription, confirm that you received the notifications.
2. To check your email metrics, use the Virtual Deliverability Manager dashboard in the Amazon SES console.
   Note: If you send an email to multiple recipients, then you can't display the email recipients.

Related information

Amazon SES email sending metrics FAQs

Virtual Deliverability Manager settings