About the author:
Darren Blumenfeld is the CEO and Founder of InboxAlly, an email deliverability platform trusted by growth-focused marketers. He’s previously founded HonestMail, worked at NASA, and holds degrees from Tufts and Columbia. His passion for tech, education, and creativity continues to inspire innovation in email outreach.
If your Amazon SES emails keep landing in spam, you’re not alone. From authentication gaps to poor list hygiene, small missteps can tank deliverability. This guide breaks down why it happens and exactly what to do to fix it.
Key Takeaway
Amazon SES emails often land in spam due to misconfigured authentication, poor list hygiene, or low sender reputation. With proper setup, such as verifying domains, warming up IPs, and monitoring engagement, you can resolve these issues and consistently reach the inbox.
Why Amazon SES Emails Go to Spam (and How to Fix It)
1. Missing or Misconfigured Authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC)
If your DNS records aren’t properly configured, mailbox providers can’t verify your identity and may flag your emails as suspicious.
Fix: Set up and test SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records. Use Amazon SES’s built-in DKIM feature for easier setup.
2. No Reverse DNS
Some spam filters check for reverse DNS to confirm your IP’s legitimacy.
Fix: Configure reverse DNS to map your sending IP address to your domain name.
3. Unverified Sender Address
Amazon SES requires you to verify email addresses and domains to prevent spoofing.
Fix: Use the SES console or API to verify your “From,” “Return-Path,” and other sender fields in each region.
4. Poor List Hygiene (Inactive, Invalid, or Spam Trap Emails)
Low engagement, high bounce rates, and spam traps hurt your sender reputation.
Fix: Regularly clean your list. Remove contacts who haven’t opened or clicked in 30–90 days. Use double opt-in to reduce fake signups.
5. High Complaint or Bounce Rates
When too many users mark your emails as spam or your messages bounce, it signals poor sending practices.
Fix: Segment your lists, avoid spam trigger words, and monitor complaint rates through the SES Deliverability Dashboard.
6. Content Triggers Spam Filters
Spam filters scan for common red flags like misleading subject lines, image-heavy layouts, or certain keywords.
Fix: Run your emails through spam testing tools before sending. Use plain, readable HTML and avoid overusing links or salesy phrases. Focus on relevant content that matches your recipients’ interests and expectations.
7. Cold Sending from a New Domain or IP
Warming up a new domain or IP too quickly can negatively impact your deliverability.
Fix: Use a gradual warmup schedule. Start with low volumes to engaged users, then scale over time.
8. Using Shared IPs Instead of Dedicated
Shared IPs inherit other users’ reputations, which may be poor.
Fix: Upgrade to a dedicated IP address to control your own deliverability reputation.
9. Lack of Engagement
Low open and click-through rates signal mailbox providers that your content isn’t wanted.
Fix: Personalize emails, segment audiences, and prune inactive subscribers.
10. Deliverability Settings Not Monitored
Issues like threshold breaches, unexpected bounce spikes, or missing authentication often go unnoticed.
Fix: Use the SES Deliverability Dashboard and integrate Amazon SNS to receive real-time alerts.
How to Use the Amazon SES Console to Monitor Deliverability
The Amazon SES console has a few built-in tools that let you keep track of how your email campaigns are performing. If you catch the signs of email deliverability issues early enough, you’ll have a much better chance of keeping a good sending reputation and staying in people’s inboxes. Here’s how to do it:
Start by checking the Deliverability Dashboard (available in some tiers). It lets you:
- Track email sending volume and bounce rates
- Monitor the complaint rate over time
- Get alerts when thresholds are breached
- View authentication issues related to SPF, DKIM, and DMARC
You can also set up feedback loops that alert you when recipients mark your email messages as spam. This gives you a chance to clean your list, adjust your email content, or stop sending to unengaged users.
To make the most of these tools, make sure you’ve set up verified identities for your domains and that you’re monitoring your sending reputation on a daily basis.
If you’re a dev or an advanced sender, you can also opt for Amazon’s Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) integration. This sends real-time feedback directly to your systems, which helps you debug and fix Amazon SES emails before they cause long-term damage.
8 Keys to Great Email Deliverability
What should you do to prevent your Amazon SES emails from going to spam? Below are the following steps:
1. Authenticate Your Email
Authenticating your email is the first and most important step to excellent email deliverability. This tells email providers that you are a legitimate sender and not spoofing your identity.
Meanwhile, a lack of email authentication, like Sender Policy Framework (SPF) or DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM), or other domain based message authentication methods, can lead to an Internet Service Provider (ISP) flagging your Amazon SES email as spam.
When you authenticate your email, you are proving to the email providers that you are indeed the owner of such an account. It also proves that your email communications or transactional marketing messages have remained the same during transit.
If you’re managing your own email server, properly configuring these records can make a significant difference in deliverability. Using Amazon SES also makes the process much easier since it already has an easy DKIM feature.
Speaking of the DKIM feature, it makes the configurations automatic, even behind the scenes.
Check out this guideline from AWS to learn more about authenticating your email in Amazon SES.
2. Verify Your Email Address
Verifying your email address is required by Amazon SES as it protects your sending identity. This is because a spammer can spoof an authentic email address or falsify an email header to make it appear that it originates from another source.
To do this, use the Amazon SES API or the SES console. Some factors involved in the verification process include the identity that you use in the “From” field, “Sender,” “Source,” or “Return-Path.”
Therefore, keep in mind that email addresses are case-sensitive and that the verification status of one email address is not the same for each region. It’s also simply because Amazon SES has endpoints in several AWS regions.
So, verifying such an identity in each region is essential. This is especially true if you’re planning to send emails from the same identity but in more than one region.
3. Clean Your Email List Regularly
Email list cleaning is essential to keep your database from unwanted contacts. These contacts may eventually taint your IP reputation and, worse, damage the relationship with subscribers who are interested in receiving the content from you.
Start by defining a realistic engagement window for your audience, such as 30, 60, or 90 days. If a contact hasn’t opened or clicked within that timeframe, it’s best to remove them from your list to protect your sender reputation.
Another good reason you should remove the non-engagers is that you may be sent to a spam trap, which, by the way, is a silent reputation trap, too!
If you continue to email spam traps, your emails will not just be in the spam folder. The worst that can happen is that your domain or IP address will be blocked, and AWS could even suspend your email service.
4. Use Double Opt-in Rather than Single Opt-in
Double opt-in is another way to support list hygiene by confirming that new subscribers truly want your emails. It is a subscription process whereby a new email address will be added to a mailing list only if the email address owner clicks the confirmation link in the activation process.
This method helps validate the email before adding it to your AWS SES list.
5. Filter Your Content
Many email service providers, including Amazon SES, use content filtering to determine if the incoming emails are spam. These filters also look for questionable content and will automatically block an email if it appears spam.
At best, you can use a mail tester to check your newsletter’s quality and spam score before sending it.
6. Respect Sending Quotas and Ramp Up Slowly
Amazon SES puts limits on how many emails you can send and how fast you can send them. These limits help protect all users and maintain a good reputation with inbox providers.
- Sending quota: This is the number of recipients you can email over a 24-hour period. Every recipient counts toward your limit, even if you send one email to multiple people.
- Sending rate: This is how many emails SES will accept per second. You can go a little over for short bursts, but not for long periods.
- Message size: Large emails (especially with attachments) can be blocked. SES recommends linking to files instead of attaching them directly.
If you go over your limits, SES will reject your emails until your usage drops. New accounts start in the sandbox, with a limit of 200 emails per day and 1 email per second. You can request higher limits when you move to production.
To stay safe, increase your email volume gradually. Sudden spikes can make you look like a spammer.
Want help warming up your domain safely? InboxAlly automates the process so you land in inboxes, not spam. Book a demo to see how it works.
7. Send High-Quality Emails
Focus on content your audience actually wants—personalized, valuable, and timely messages sent to the right segment of your list.
Avoid long-winded or vague copy. With shrinking attention spans, concise emails that get to the point perform better and are less likely to be flagged.
Consider the purpose of your email. Common types include:
- Prospecting emails
- Welcome sequences
- Lead nurturing campaigns
- Promotional announcements
- Newsletters
- Transactional messages
- Cart abandonment follow-ups
- Post-purchase and re-engagement emails
- Branding and storytelling emails
Each one should align with where your reader is in the funnel. The more aligned your message is to their intent, the better your deliverability and engagement.
8. Monitor and Maintain a Strong Sender Reputation
An ISP assigns organizations an email sender reputation or score, a crucial component of email deliverability. Therefore, achieving a higher email sender reputation score means that your email is more likely to reach the inbox by your recipient’s mail server.
To build your reputation with Amazon SES, you need to send high-quality content to your recipients. Over time, your reputation becomes more trusted, and Amazon SES successfully delivers your emails more consistently.
Too many spam complaints or bounces can damage your sender reputation, lower your sending limits, or even result in account suspension.
So, to prevent it from happening, test your emails first using their Mailbox Simulator. The Mailbox Simulator lets you test deliverability safely, without affecting your bounce or complaint metrics, and without needing to create dummy email addresses.
Reach the Inbox with Amazon SES and Stay There
Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) offers a powerful, scalable way to send email marketing campaigns without managing your own servers. It’s cost-effective, developer-friendly, and widely trusted. But even with the best tools, landing in the primary inbox takes more than just verifying your domain.
From SPF and DKIM setup to sender reputation, every detail affects whether your emails reach real people or disappear into spam.
This guide outlined the most common issues behind Amazon SES deliverability problems and how to fix them. If you’re ready to move beyond guesswork and take control of your inbox placement, InboxAlly can help. Our platform works behind the scenes to improve deliverability from day one.
Book a live demo today and see how we help your emails land where they belong, not in the junk folder.