AlpacaRelay + Amazon SES: Quality-Scored Emails, Connected

Visit alpacarelay.com and sign up for a free account. No credit card required. You'll receive instant access to the dashboard and the integrations library. Once logged in, navigate to Settings in the left sidebar, then select Integrations. You'll see Amazon SES listed under Email Service Providers. Click to begin the connection flow. This step takes fewer than 2 minutes and establishes your AlpacaRelay workspace, which will hold all your connected data, campaigns, and quality-scored email workflows.

Log into your Amazon Web Services (AWS) account and navigate to the SES console. If you haven't verified a sending domain or email address in SES, do that first—AWS requires domain or email verification before you can send. Once verified, go to AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) and create a new user or use an existing one with SES permissions. Generate Access Key ID and Secret Access Key for this user. Copy both credentials—you'll need them in the next step. Ensure the IAM user has the AmazonSESFullAccess policy or a custom policy that allows ses:SendEmail and ses:SendRawEmail actions. This protects your account by limiting what AlpacaRelay can do to SES-specific operations only.

Return to AlpacaRelay's Integrations page and paste your AWS Access Key ID and Secret Access Key into the designated fields. Select your AWS region (e.g., us-east-1, eu-west-1)—this must match the region where you verified your SES domain. AlpacaRelay will test the connection by sending a verification email to confirm the credentials work. You'll see a green confirmation message once the test succeeds. This connection is encrypted and uses AWS's OAuth-style authentication, meaning AlpacaRelay never stores your raw credentials on our servers. The entire process takes 1-2 minutes and establishes a secure, read-write link between AlpacaRelay and your SES sending account.

Once connected, AlpacaRelay displays available data fields from your ecommerce platform (if you've synced customer lists via CSV, Shopify, or another source). Map fields like customer email, first name, order history, and product category to ensure personalization tokens work correctly in your campaigns. Then navigate to Campaigns and select Create New Campaign. Choose an email template or start from blank. AlpacaRelay's AI engine will suggest subject lines, body copy, and CTAs based on your mapped data and email goal (e.g., abandoned cart, welcome, post-purchase). Review and customize as needed. This step ensures your first email is personalized and relevant before quality scoring.

Before hitting send, AlpacaRelay automatically runs your email through the 8-Dimension Email Quality Framework (EQF), which scores your email across Deliverability, Mobile Render, CTA Clarity, Personalization Depth, Visual Hierarchy, Copy Effectiveness, Brand Consistency, and Structural Compliance. You'll see your Email Quality Score (EQS) displayed as a 0-10 rating. Emails scoring 8 or higher are flagged as ready to send. If your score is lower, AlpacaRelay highlights specific dimensions that need improvement—for example, 'CTA Clarity: Consider making your call-to-action button larger or more prominent.' Once you're satisfied with the score and content, click Send. AlpacaRelay queues the email in Amazon SES, which delivers it within seconds to your recipients. Delivery logs sync back to AlpacaRelay, so you can track opens, clicks, and bounces in real time.