When it comes to gardening, Direct Mailing, and procreating, proper seeding is essential. In the interests of keeping this post clean, we’ll just focus on the Direct Mail version of seeding.
In Direct Mail, seeding is the process of placing a ‘dummy’ record (name and address) into a mailing database to track and monitor mailings. This can be inserted into your List Rental/List Fulfillment data to monitor when others mail your data or into your Merge Purge data (post merge) to track your own mailings. The name and address are either set up by the individual list owner and mailers or a list monitoring company.
Tracking is the major reason to seed and the following list some common tracking metrics
Tracking Usage
The number of seeds returned will show the number of times your list rental data was mailed and what was mailed. This can identify illegal reuses and non-approved offers being mailed that you may consider competitive or just too risky, or not what you want associated with your brand.
Tracking Dates
Seeds inserted into your Merge Purge data can show you how long your actual process takes. You know when you rented the file, when it shipped, when the data was printed, and even the date dropped in the mail. Placing seeds in your merge data can help you to identify if there are any issues with your processes and if the mail is being received during the prime time you would like your potential customers to see your offers.
Tracking Quality
Many people get print samples provided by their printer and/or lettershop, however seeds can further help in identifying many issues related to quality. Getting your seed will show you how the letter shop did with the printing, mail insertion and if there was any errors or other issues with your promotion.
Tracking Tests
Seeds can assist in showing the quality and timeliness of different providers of services. You may want to test letter shops, print shops, postal authorities, or even service providers. Simple adding 2 unique seeds into the different output files destined for the two services you are testing will give you the ability to review when and how they were received. This can help in your decision which service provider best meets your needs.
Setting up a Seed
While it is best to set up your own seeds and to keep that information as confidential as possible to be able to monitor all aspects of your mailing properly, service providers can often also set up your seeds in many cases for automatic insertion.
Some service providers will also produce a seeding report which will include fields such as dates, names, key codes etc. that can be used to track your seeds.
Seeding is the BEST way to safeguard your data against abuse and review quality and timeliness. In this business your names are your biggest assets and they need to be protected.
