Amazon Pinpoint
A multi-channel marketing communication service that delivers personalized messages via email, SMS, push notifications, and voice to targeted user segments
Overview
Amazon Pinpoint is a multi-channel messaging service designed for customer engagement. It delivers personalized messages to targeted segments through email, SMS, push notifications (iOS/Android/Web), voice messages, and custom channels. It features segmentation based on user behavioral data and demographic attributes, A/B testing, journeys (multi-step automated delivery flows), and end-to-end campaign effectiveness measurement.
Role Division with SES and Email Delivery Design
Pinpoint and SES can both deliver email, but they serve different purposes. SES is an email sending infrastructure specialized for high-volume transactional email delivery (password resets, order confirmations, etc.). Its primary usage pattern is sending individual messages via API, with no segmentation or campaign management features. Pinpoint is a marketing communication platform that provides bulk delivery to user segments, personalization, A/B testing, and delivery schedule management. Since Pinpoint internally uses SES infrastructure for email delivery, SES sandbox removal and sending limit increases also apply to Pinpoint. In practice, the rational approach is to send transactional emails directly through SES while managing marketing emails (newsletters, promotions, re-engagement) through Pinpoint. Pinpoint's email templates support personalization via Handlebars syntax, allowing dynamic insertion of user names, purchase history, and recommended products.
Segmentation and Journey Design
Pinpoint's segmentation operates on two layers: endpoint attributes (user devices and contact information) and user attributes. Endpoint attributes can include device type, OS version, location, and custom attributes, while user attributes store demographic information and behavioral history. Dynamic segments evaluate filter conditions in real time, so segment membership automatically updates as user states change. Journeys are automated delivery flows composed of multiple steps, combining conditional branches, wait periods, message sends, and multivariate splits (A/B tests). For example, you can visually build a re-engagement flow that sends a push notification to users who haven't logged in for 3 days after app installation, then sends an email 7 days later if there's still no response. Conversion rates are measured at each journey step, enabling data-driven decisions about which channel and timing are most effective. For a deeper understanding of marketing automation strategies, books on marketing automation (Amazon) are a great resource.
Event Collection and Analytics Dashboard
Pinpoint provides not only message delivery but also the ability to collect and analyze application user behavior events. Through the AWS Amplify SDK or Pinpoint API, you can send custom in-app events (product views, cart additions, purchase completions, etc.) to Pinpoint and use this event data as segmentation criteria or journey triggers. The analytics dashboard visualizes DAU/MAU, session counts, retention rates, funnel analysis, and campaign open/click/conversion rates. Collected event data can be exported to S3 via Kinesis Data Firehose for more detailed analysis with Athena or QuickSight. For SMS delivery, you need to acquire sender numbers (short codes, long codes, 10DLC) and comply with country-specific regulations. SMS to Japan is sent as international SMS, so be aware of delivery rate differences across carriers. Delivery costs vary significantly by channel - push notifications are the cheapest (1 USD per million), while SMS is the most expensive (approximately 0.07 USD per message to Japan).