First big campaign with TNP + Amazon SES – any tips before I hit send?

[BlackFridayFrance]

Hey everyone,

I’ve been using The Newsletter Plugin for a while and just upgraded to the Professional version this year.

The reason: I recently migrated mys website https://www.blackfriday-france.com/ to a new host, and the new provider has a pretty strict hourly limit on PHP mail() sends. So I decided to move everything over to Amazon SES using the official add-on.

I’m now preparing my first big send (around 20k subscribers) for the upcoming Black Friday campaign, and before I launch, I’d really appreciate some feedback or best practices from other TNP + SES users.

Specifically:
• Do you still use the internal scheduler, or do you recommend setting up an external cron for stability?
• How do you handle batching — do you keep the default (20 emails/batch), or increase it for larger lists?
• Even with SES handling the delivery, does the WordPress server still get a noticeable CPU load during big sends?
• Any advice on tracking links (UTMs) and making sure stats sync correctly?

I’ve tested small batches (couple hundred) successfully, but this will be my first real full-scale shoot, and I just want to make sure I don’t mess it up 😅

Thanks in advance for any experience or feedback — really love how TNP integrates with SES so far!

[Stefano]

Hi, if you have a license with us, you can set the external trigger from your account page on this site, otherwise you can use cron-jobs.org. for example or the cron from your cpanel, if available by your provider.
About the sending with amazon, start slowly, for example 500 emails per hour. Using the addon, it will intercept the bounces and complaints to not contact them a second time.
But be aware: if you have a “dirty” list that produces many bounces or, even worse, many complaints, amazon can block you. Keep an eye on their console, they have specialised panel to monitor those vital parameters.
The CPU load does not change, but a connection to an API is shorter than an SMTP, so by average the CPU remains busy less time.
The delivery is never made by WP. Both with an addon, and SMTP plugin or vanilla WP, the site just “move” the email to another system which takes care of the delivery. But the email needs to be prepared (tag replacements, tracking, …), that is what loads the CPU.
Be sure, using amazon SES, to configure the SPF and the DKIM following their instructions and adding the records to your DNS. Don’t go with a campaign with only a validated email.

[BlackFridayFrance]

Hello,
Thank you very much for your replies.
I do have a license with you and I opted for the SES module. 🙂

But my question is: is it possible to transfer the emails in bulk once and for all, so that the load on my server is a one-off and SES handles the rest?

Kind regards

[Author]

Posts