Direct Mail supports two categories of commercial email: triggered emails and batch emails. All emails must be permission-based—sent only to recipients who have actively subscribed.
Email types
Email type is determined by whether the email is triggered by a specific user action or system event.
Triggered emails: Sent automatically in response to a user action or system event. Examples include registration notifications, transaction notifications, password reset emails, and system alerts. Triggered emails can only be sent via API or SMTP.
Batch emails: Sent to multiple recipients at once, independent of any specific user action. Examples include product promotions and newsletters. Batch emails can be sent using any supported method.
Direct Mail permits only permission-based commercial emails. Recipient addresses must come from member registrations, and recipients must have actively subscribed to the content. Do not send unsolicited spam.
Before you use the Direct Mail service, read the Direct Mail Terms of Service.
Email content requirements
Every email you send must meet the following requirements:
Do not reference social media platforms, messaging apps, or resource-sharing services—including WeChat, QQ, QR codes, group information, Facebook, and cloud storage drives.
Include a salutation, a clear and compliant description of the content, and a valid unsubscribe link.
Do not send emails that fail to meet the two preceding requirements.
Permitted senders and recipients
Do not include sensitive words such as reactionary, obscene, abusive, or insulting language.
Recipients must have registered on your website and actively subscribed. For example, a user who subscribes to periodic discount promotions from a store they follow on an e-commerce platform, or who opts in to job recommendations after registering on a recruitment website.
Do not send prospecting emails—unsolicited promotional emails sent to non-members, non-registered users, or users who have not given permission. This includes contact addresses obtained from third-party sources without the recipient's direct consent.
If the recipient is a business partner, personalize the email and include a salutation and an unsubscribe option. If a recipient complains about your email, Direct Mail freezes the sender address and all other sender addresses under your Alibaba Cloud account in that region. The Direct Mail console for that region becomes unusable after the freeze.
Do not send emails that fail to meet the preceding requirements.
How the unsubscribe process works
You are responsible for implementing and managing the unsubscribe process in your own system.
Each email you send must contain a unique unsubscribe link that includes the recipient's email address. When a recipient clicks this link, a request is sent to your unsubscribe service. Your service then parses the recipient's address from the link and removes it from your mailing list.