Understanding Seed Addresses

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Seed Addresses and Limitations

A seed address is a purpose-built email account that is used for testing email delivery and inbox placement. Email marketers often create test accounts at the major email providers (Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft, and the like), along with other test addresses at domains belonging to themselves or their clients. Domain blocking or poor inbox placement can tell email marketers about a sender's reputation. Seed addresses reveal certain sender reputation aspects, such as how spam filters judge the email's content or the infrastructure from which it was sent.

While test lists are certainly helpful in checking how your email renders in different environments, Lead Gen & CRM does not recommend that you solely rely on seed lists to test deliverability. This is because the largest email receivers (Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft, and the like) have intricate and personalized spam filters. As such, the deliverability to one seed address is not representative of other addresses with different engagement profiles. Given that seed addresses do not behave like actual users, this is even more of an impractical comparison.
 

Other Recommendations

The source of your data, and how user engagement is respected over time, is much more important to deliverability than the specific content tested with seed addresses.

The way to get into an inbox is to start with permission, such as having a clear sign-up process that confirms consent before sending an email. In regards to permission, Lead Gen & CRM recommends using confirmed opt-in methods and forbids the use of purchased lists.

Once contacts have been added to your mailing list, use all the data at your disposal to adjust the frequency at which individuals receive emails. This could be, for example, historical email opens and clicks, website visits, or purchases. If you see that a recipient no longer engages with you, practice proactive list management and remove them from your mailing list. It is hard for spam filters to calculate good reputations for senders with large segments of unengaged recipients, and your email deliverability can be harmed if you do not respect user engagement.

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