Email Service

Transactional emails, marketing campaigns, and delivery tracking with SendGrid/AWS SES

Requirements Document

Comprehensive requirements for the Email Service in the KnowledgeTracker Platform.

1. Functional Requirements

1.1 Transactional Emails

  • Welcome emails and account activation
  • Password reset and security notifications
  • Course enrollment confirmations
  • Payment receipts and invoices
  • Certificate delivery emails
  • Assignment and grade notifications

1.2 Marketing Campaigns

  • Bulk email campaigns to segments
  • A/B testing for subject lines and content
  • Personalization with merge tags and dynamic content
  • Scheduled and drip campaigns
  • Campaign performance analytics

1.3 Email Templates

  • Drag-and-drop email template builder
  • HTML and plain text versions
  • Responsive design for mobile devices
  • Organization branding (logo, colors, footer)
  • Template versioning and testing

1.4 List Management

  • Subscriber list creation and segmentation
  • Import/export contact lists
  • Unsubscribe management and suppression lists
  • Double opt-in confirmation
  • Bounce and complaint handling

1.5 Delivery Tracking

  • Real-time delivery status (sent, delivered, bounced, failed)
  • Open rate tracking with pixel tracking
  • Click-through rate with link tracking
  • Spam complaint and unsubscribe tracking
  • Email client and device analytics

1.6 Compliance & Reputation

  • CAN-SPAM, GDPR, and CASL compliance
  • SPF, DKIM, and DMARC authentication
  • Sender reputation monitoring
  • Dedicated IP addresses for high-volume senders
  • Feedback loops for ISPs

2. Non-Functional Requirements

2.1 Performance

  • Send up to 10,000 emails per minute
  • Email queuing and asynchronous processing
  • Delivery within 5 minutes for transactional emails

2.2 Reliability

  • 99.9% email delivery success rate
  • Automatic retry for temporary failures
  • Failover to backup email provider
  • Email queue persistence and recovery

2.3 Scalability

  • Support for millions of emails per day
  • Horizontal scaling of email workers
  • Load balancing across multiple providers

2.4 Security

  • TLS encryption for email transmission
  • API key authentication for sending emails
  • Rate limiting to prevent abuse
  • Content scanning for phishing and malware

3. Integration Requirements

3.1 Internal Microservices

  • Notification Service: Email channel delivery
  • User Management: User contact information
  • Analytics: Campaign performance tracking

3.2 External Services

  • Email Providers: SendGrid, AWS SES, Mailgun, Postmark
  • Email Validation: ZeroBounce, Kickbox for list cleaning

Requirements Validation

Use this requirements document alongside the Database Design to validate:

  • Email template storage and versioning
  • Campaign and subscriber list management
  • Delivery tracking and analytics schema
  • Bounce and unsubscribe management