CAI AWS SES External Email Strategy

Overview

During the HubSpot sales workflow review meeting, Mark Hope proposed a cost-saving architecture for Citrus America's email marketing: use AWS SES (Simple Email Service) to send large-scale marketing emails to non-pipeline contacts, rather than paying HubSpot's marketing contact fees. Activity from these external sends is logged back into HubSpot via API, keeping the CRM as the single source of truth.

This strategy is under review by Miriam Framson as a potential next step following the current contact database cleanup initiative.

Status: Proposed — pending Miriam's review and direction after database cleanup completes.

The Problem

Citrus America's HubSpot subscription costs approximately $20,000/year (~$5,000/quarter). A significant driver of this cost is the number of marketing contacts — currently 8,200 out of 10,700 total contacts.

HubSpot charges based on marketing contact count, and sending to large, unengaged lists also:
- Hurts email deliverability (low open rates, high bounce rates)
- Inflates subscription tier costs
- Provides little return on contacts that have never engaged

The core tension: Citrus America wants to maintain a broad prospecting list without paying HubSpot marketing contact rates for every name in the database.

Proposed Architecture

Two-Tier Contact Strategy

How It Works

1. Non-pipeline contacts remain in HubSpot but are set to non-marketing status, removing them from the billing count.
2. Emails are sent via AWS SES — an external service capable of sending at very high volume (up to ~1 million emails/day) at negligible cost.
3. Activity is logged back to HubSpot via API — opens, clicks, and engagement data appear in the HubSpot contact activity timeline, making the external send invisible to end users.

"From your perspective, it's invisible. You won't even know what's happening." — Mark Hope

Key Benefits

• Cost reduction: Reduces the number of HubSpot marketing contacts, potentially cutting the subscription tier significantly. Mark estimated the current 8,200 marketing contacts could be reduced by half or more.
• No loss of tracking: Opens, clicks, and engagement are still captured and surfaced in HubSpot via API integration.
• Deliverability protection: Separating cold/unengaged contacts from the primary HubSpot send list improves sender reputation and open rates for pipeline nurturing emails.
• Scalability: AWS SES has effectively no practical volume ceiling for this use case.

Relationship to Database Cleanup

This strategy is downstream of the ^[1] effort. The cleanup will:

1. Remove undeliverable email addresses (bulk hygiene run)
2. Identify unengaged contacts via AI enrichment
3. Reclassify unengaged contacts as non-marketing

Once contacts are reclassified, the AWS SES architecture provides a path to continue nurturing those contacts without re-incurring HubSpot marketing contact costs.

Current Status & Next Steps

• Miriam Framson will review the proposal and provide direction after the contact cleanup list is prepared by Karly.
• Mark can provide additional documentation or examples on request.
• No additional HubSpot license is required — AWS SES is the only external dependency, and Asymmetric already operates this infrastructure for other clients.

Related

• ^[2]
• ^[3]
• ^[4]