When sending bulk emails, you must ensure each email lands in the recipient’s inbox and the content is displayed clearly and correctly. However, these emails are sent to subscribers who use different browsers, devices, and mailboxes with varied infrastructure and spam filters. So, testing your emails to account for all these variables becomes vital for your email campaign.
But is seed listing the best way to do this? How do you effectively implement and use a seed list for your email campaigns? If these are some of the questions bothering you, then you’re in the right place.
Here are the important insights on what a seed list is, why it’s important to email marketing, how to build one, and more. Figure out the value of a seed list and use it to boost your email deliverability today!
What is a Seed List?
In simple terms, a seed list is a list of email addresses you first send your marketing emails to before sending them to your actual subscribers. Doing this allows you to decide how your emails are received, how they appear, and how your subscribers interact with them. It’s also a way to ensure your email lands in your subscriber’s inbox, not the spam folder.
There are several types of email seed lists, here are the common ones:
- Personal seed list – this is where you create email accounts with different mailbox providers and use them to send test emails. Some companies or businesses would use their employees’ email addresses.
- Specific seed list – created to test and troubleshoot specific issues with a particular mailbox provider. That is, having a seed list of Gmail addresses, for instance, to test how your emails perform on Gmail.
- Professional seed list – created by a team of email experts. It usually comes at a cost but has a larger, more diverse list of addresses that are regularly updated and maintained.
The best seed list for you will depend on your needs and budget. However, professional seed lists offer more value in the long run. Aside from being less time-consuming to create and maintain, they’re more comprehensive and will give you a detailed preview of your email’s performance.
Why is a Seed List Important in Email Marketing?
Seed lists give you the necessary insight to upgrade your email campaigns from a hit-or-miss to constant success. The main goal of a seed list is to allow you to track and monitor how different email clients interact with your emails. But if you break it down further, there are several important benefits to having a seed list, that will facilitate the success of your email marketing strategy, like:
Early Detection and Troubleshooting of Delivery Issues
Imagine sending a blast email to everyone on your email list only to find there was a typo on the subject line, the links are broken, or the emails never reached the targeted recipient. A seed list is like a trial list that can help you avoid this. You can resolve any errors or delivery issues with your email campaign before officially launching it.
Avoiding Spam Folders
The death of your email campaigns starts with your emails landing in the spam folder. But if you could understand how different spam filters behave for different email clients, you would be in a better position to avoid spam folders. Luckily, a seed list can help with this. By conducting a seed list test, you can identify how your emails trigger different spam filters and correct the issues before your email campaign sets off.
Increased Open or Click-through Rates
By sending emails to your seed list first, you can identify issues like text-image misalignments, broken links, typos, and so on. These insights help you optimize your emails for different mailboxes and make the content more interesting to prospects. This encourages your subscribers to open your emails and take action.
Improved Inbox Placement
Through a seed list, you can figure out whether your emails are landing in the primary inbox, promotions, socials, or spam folder. Using this insight, you can improve your inbox placement. You can also use the seed addresses to engage with your emails and mark them as important to improve your future deliverability.
With InboxAlly’s seed list, for example, we train inbox providers to recognize your emails as important. Using unique email addresses, we engage with your content, moving your emails from promotions or updates tabs to the primary inbox, marking them as important, and even replying to them.
Discover more on how InboxAlly’s Seed Emails can enhance your inbox placement and reputation with inbox providers. Enjoy Long-term Email Marketing Success
How Does a Seed List Impact Email Deliverability?
By sending emails to your seed list, you can test for email deliverability issues like email authentication errors, poor sender reputation, and spam triggers. That way, you can react quickly and resolve those issues to build trust with email servers and improve your deliverability ratio.
Seed lists also help with improved engagement. As the recipients of your seed emails open, click, and even respond to the emails, it shows email servers your emails are valuable or important. This improves your inbox placement, and as more of your emails land in the primary inbox, you enjoy increased open rates, improved sender reputation, and overall better deliverability.
How to Make a Seed List?
Creating a seed list is the most crucial step. Find contacts of people who are willing to open your emails and give feedback, even if they aren’t polished sales emails. Ideally, many people choose their colleagues, friends, or family to include in their seed list. Ensure you explain your objectives and what you intend to achieve with the emails so they give you accurate feedback.
Also, try to select contacts that cut across the many email clients. The list should at least cover all the email clients your actual subscribers use. For example, if your subscribers mainly use HotMail, Yahoo, and Outlook, then your seed list should cover all three (and more if you like). That way, you get more comprehensive insights by testing broadly.
Enhance Your Deliverability With Email Seed Lists!
Seed lists are a proactive approach to fine tuning your emails to boost your email deliverability. By monitoring the performance of your campaign across different email servers, you can troubleshoot potential issues before they affect your true audience. The good news is you don’t have to do this alone!
Use InboxAlly to streamline the whole process and enhance your email deliverability further. Our seed email list engages consistently with your emails, improving inbox placement, open rates, engagement, and overall success of your email campaign. Get in touch and try InboxAlly out today!