AWS S3 Destination

MessageGears delivers audience files directly to an Amazon S3 bucket. This is a flexible, general-purpose destination for teams that want to receive audience extracts in their own cloud storage — for use in downstream activation, analytics, or data pipelines.

Prerequisites

Before setting up the AWS S3 destination, make sure the following are in place:

• An AWS account with an S3 bucket already created
• An IAM user or role with s3:PutObject (and optionally s3:GetBucketLocation) permissions on the target bucket
• The Access Key ID and Secret Access Key for the IAM user
• A MessageGears audience or Blueprint ready to publish — see Creating and Editing Audiences and Blueprints for Campaign Segmentation

Step 1: Provide your S3 credentials to MessageGears

Unlike OAuth-based destinations, the AWS S3 destination uses IAM credentials that MessageGears stores securely on your behalf. Provide the following to MessageGears Support when setting up the destination:

Field	Description
AWS Access Key ID	The access key for your IAM user
AWS Secret Access Key	The secret key for your IAM user
AWS Region	The region your bucket is in (e.g., us-east-1)
Bucket Name	The name of the S3 bucket to deliver files to

MessageGears Support will configure the destination and confirm when it is ready to use.

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For security best practices, create a dedicated IAM user with the minimum permissions required (write access to the specific bucket only). Avoid using root account credentials.

Step 2: Configure folder paths

S3 destinations support delivering files into a subfolder within your bucket. When setting up campaigns, note the following:

• The Bucket field on the campaign settings page must contain only the bucket name — do not include folder paths with slashes here.
• Include any folder paths in the campaign Name field instead.

For example, to deliver to s3://my-bucket/audiences/weekly/, set:

• Bucket: my-bucket
• Name: audiences/weekly/my-file

Step 3: Build your audience in MessageGears

Use the MessageGears audience builder or a Blueprint to define the segment you want to deliver to S3.

For guidance on building audiences and Blueprints, see:

• Creating and Editing Audiences
• Blueprints for Campaign Segmentation

Step 4: Create an External Campaign targeting the S3 destination

Once your audience is defined and the S3 destination is configured, create an External Campaign to deliver the file:

1. Navigate to Campaigns > External.
2. Under Settings, select your audience or Blueprint.
3. In the Destination dropdown, select your AWS S3 destination.
4. Set your schedule (one-time or recurring) and click Save or Launch.

For a full walkthrough of the External Campaign workflow, see External Campaigns.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Likely cause	Resolution
Campaign fails to deliver	Invalid credentials or insufficient IAM permissions	Verify the IAM user has s3:PutObject on the bucket; contact MessageGears Support
File delivered to wrong path	Folder path included in Bucket field	Move any folder path to the campaign Name field
Files not appearing in expected region	Incorrect region configured	Contact MessageGears Support to update the region setting

For additional help, contact MessageGears Support.